Amazone EC2 ... A headache! Do not buy it!

My experience on Amazon AWS EC2 hosting.

Thought 1). Oops!! I made a mistake by choosing it.

Thought 2). Oh god!! what have I done by choosing it.

Thought 3). Ummm, it's ok. It's not so bad dicision.

Thought 4). Wow, it's wonderful. Thank god I chose it.

Thought 5). Oh shit!! it can be nightmare sometimes.

Thought 6). Bloody hell!! They don't provide support even if we purchase the most expensive support package.

Thought 7). Woosh!! Finally all done. I lost my sleep for a few nights but at the end I learned a few things.

Also, no matter what level of support package you purchase, absolutely nobody is going to help you. Only your own knowledge of Linux will come to rescue (Ofcourse, only if you choose the Linux server - which is most likely). 

In simple term what they give is a plain server box on which you have full control, nothing else. But the other advantages they provide are awesome like Elastic size of storage, elastic processing resources, elastic IPs, elastic databases etc. The specs looked fantastic to me but there are numerous types of things you have to manage when you are supposed to host a comprehensive website. In short I had to acquire all the knowledge that a linux hosting provider needs to have. In the end it was fun ......... :)

Check if variable is serialized in PHP

Want to check if a variable is serialized or not in PHP? Here you go ....

/**
 * This program is free software. It comes without any warranty, to
 * the extent permitted by applicable law. You can redistribute it
 * and/or modify it under the terms of the Do What The Fuck You Want
 * To Public License, Version 2, as published by Sam Hocevar. See
 * http://sam.zoy.org/wtfpl/COPYING for more details.
 */ 

/**
 * Tests if an input is valid PHP serialized string.
 *
 * Checks if a string is serialized using quick string manipulation
 * to throw out obviously incorrect strings. Unserialize is then run
 * on the string to perform the final verification.
 *
 * Valid serialized forms are the following:
 * 
 * 
boolean: b:1;
 * 
integer: i:1;
 * 
double: d:0.2;
 * 
string: s:4:"test";
 * 
array: a:3:{i:0;i:1;i:1;i:2;i:2;i:3;}
 * 
object: O:8:"stdClass":0:{}
 * 
null: N;
 * 
 *
 * @author  Chris Smith 
 * @copyright Copyright (c) 2009 Chris Smith (http://www.cs278.org/)
 * @license  http://sam.zoy.org/wtfpl/ WTFPL
 * @param  string $value Value to test for serialized form
 * @param  mixed $result Result of unserialize() of the $value
 * @return  boolean   True if $value is serialized data, otherwise false
 */
function is_serialized($value, &$result = null)
{
 // Bit of a give away this one
 if (!is_string($value))
 {
  return false;
 }

 // Serialized false, return true. unserialize() returns false on an
 // invalid string or it could return false if the string is serialized
 // false, eliminate that possibility.
 if ($value === 'b:0;')
 {
  $result = false;
  return true;
 }

 $length = strlen($value);
 $end = '';

 switch ($value[0])
 {
  case 's':
   if ($value[$length - 2] !== '"')
   {
    return false;
   }
  case 'b':
  case 'i':
  case 'd':
   // This looks odd but it is quicker than isset()ing
   $end .= ';';
  case 'a':
  case 'O':
   $end .= '}';

   if ($value[1] !== ':')
   {
    return false;
   }

   switch ($value[2])
   {
    case 0:
    case 1:
    case 2:
    case 3:
    case 4:
    case 5:
    case 6:
    case 7:
    case 8:
    case 9:
    break;

    default:
     return false;
   }
  case 'N':
   $end .= ';';

   if ($value[$length - 1] !== $end[0])
   {
    return false;
   }
  break;

  default:
   return false;
 }

 if (($result = @unserialize($value)) === false)
 {
  $result = null;
  return false;
 }
 return true;
}