Anyterm

Deployment

This page describes deployment of the current stable version of Anyterm; the development version (which is in practice probably at least as stable) works slightly differently. This page will be updated when what's currently the development version is blessed as "stable".

The simplest deployment is to install Anyterm in your existing HTTP daemon:

This is simple and has all of the standard Anyterm benefits, but also has a number of possible disadvantages:

• You can access Anyterm from behind firewalls.
• Your HTTP daemon needs to be Apache2. I think Apache2 is great but some people prefer to use Apache1, or some other daemon.
• Although Anyterm is now reasonably well tested it is still fairly new code, and loading its module into your HTTP daemon is not going to make it more reliable.
• If your HTTP daemon fails you won't be able to access the server, which isn't much use if you wanted to use Anyterm for emergency maintenance.

So you might want to consider some other configurations.

1. Second HTTP daemon on a different port

You can have a second Apache2 installation on a non-standard port number, e.g. 8080, dedicated to Anyterm:

• You can use your choice of HTTP daemon for your main installation.
• Anyterm will keep working if your main HTTP daemon goes down.
• Your non-standard port number may be inaccessible from behind firewalls.

2. Second HTTP daemon on port 443

If you're not using HTTPS for your main web content, you can run a second HTTP daemon for Anyterm that uses only HTTPS on port 443:

• You can use your choice of HTTP daemon for your main installation.
• Anyterm will keep working if your main HTTP daemon goes down.
• Anyterm is accessible through firewalls.
• You can't use HTTPS for your main web content.

3. Second HTTP daemon, proxied to from main HTTP daemon

You can have your main HTTP daemon proxy Anyterm requests received on the standard port to the second daemon's non-standard port:

• You can use your choice of HTTP daemon for your main installation.
• Anyterm will keep working if your main web daemon goes down, as long as you can access the non-standard port number.
• Anyterm is accessible through firewalls, as long as the main daemon is functioning.
• You can use HTTPS for your main web content.
• You can't access Anyterm from behind a firewall if your main daemon fails.

4. Second HTTP daemon with additional IP address

If your platform can be configured to have multiple IP addresses, you can have a dedicated daemon for Anyterm that listens on standard ports but on a different address:

• You can use your choice of HTTP daemon for your main installation.
• Anyterm will keep working if your main web daemon goes down.
• Anyterm is accessible through firewalls.
• You can use HTTPS for your main web content.
• You need an additional IP address.

5. Dedicated machine

If you want to supervise a number of machines, you could have a dedicated machine to run Anyterm and then SSH or telnet to the others:

• You can use your choice of HTTP daemon for your main installation.
• Anyterm will keep working if your main web server goes down.
• Anyterm is accessible through firewalls.
• You can use HTTPS for your main web content.

(Let me know if you'd like to connect Anyterm to a serial port. This should be doable.)

6. Let us help!

If you'd like to get the advantages of Anyterm without the trouble of installing it and getting it working, why not join my.anyterm.org? For a small fee you can use our Anyterm installation to access your servers from almost anywhere:

• No changes at all to your system.
• Anyterm will keep working whatever happens to your system.
• Anyterm is accessible through client-side firewalls.