ResourceSpace is an open source asset management system which is designed to be user installable and configurable with minimum input from the IT professionals. It works best in a LAMP environment, but many companies do not have Linux experience or spare servers lying around..

Amazon Web Services (AWS) provide virtual servers 'in the cloud', which are easy to set up and can be used to test ResourceSpace free of charge, and implement with no capital outlay. There are many ongoing advantages to using the AWS cloud as you move forwards, as it allows your ResourceSpace installation to grow and deliver the services you want to your customers on demand.

Back in 2009 I was doing some work for Dan at ResourceSpace on a new plugin for a company called shotfarm. Mike at shotfarm wanted a full time developer to work on this code, and Dan put us in touch with each other.

Mike had great ideas about moving shotfarm into the cloud, to develop a system which could handle hundreds of thousands of images and associated product data across a wide range of manufacturers and retailers, and it soon became apparent that this could not be achieved using plugins, so shotfarm branched off ResourceSpace, ripped out a lot of the complexity, and moved into the cloud.

After a number of false starts, shotfarm now runs on more than seven 'small' instances somewhere in the AWS cloud. 'More than seven...? Yes - there are six permanent servers and one or more dynamic image processors, fired up as required to handle bulk uploads of images which otherwise would overload the servers. Resources are stored in S3, and the database is in RDS. All servers are resilient, using load balancers to provide failover and they use the AWS DNS service (Route 53) for name resolution - cloud computing as it is meant to work.

Having spent a lot of time getting this working, I now want to feed what I have learnt back into the RS community, hence this web site.

Route Plan

Over the next few weeks, I am planning on extending this site to provide more detailed information about setting up an AWS server, about how to integrate RS and AWS, and potentially creating machine images or startup scripts to automate the process. If there is anything you want to see - let me know.