Most students don’t know this, but there is a great development tool hidden in the Florida Poly infrastructure, a hosting platform with amazing security and potential, a network for Poly students the ember labs powered by the on-campus supercomputer. All of your files and information could be transmitted to you remotely via a VPN and you can use a remote compiler to quickly test programs. The Ember lab also has the entire LAMP stack installed – Linux, Apache, MariaDB/SQLite, and PHP, and python. I personally have used this to host two of my most recent projects. http://ember.hpc.lab/~dkozdra8338/PolyAsset/ and http://ember.hpc.lab/~dkozdra8338/PolySuggest/.

Note: The above links only work on the Florida Poly intranet. Connect to the campus Wi-Fi or VPN to access the links.

If clicking this link returns this image then you have found the double-edged sword of this development. Students must be logged in to the VPN to gain access. The VPN is only accessible by Poly students and faculty though. An extra layer of security at the cost of accessibility is common. 

One is an asset database for Poly students to share images and audio

The other is an anonymous dropbox to reach out to departments without having to expose yourself.

They are mostly done and not perfect, but having a place to store and host them that is inherently secure is a nice add on. I feel that if more people use this we could expand the network and share our projects.

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David Kozdra

David Kozdra is a computer science student at Florida Polytechnic University. He is the Treasurer of the Media Club, Head of Outreach of the Baked Bean Bois improv group, and the Cohost of the Poly Pod podcast.

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