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  • From: "Jeremy Blosser (emrys)" <jblosser-smgl AT firinn.org>
  • To: sm-admin AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [SM-Admin] Hosting Next Steps (Re: website status report)
  • Date: Fri, 14 Oct 2005 22:02:51 -0500

On Oct 09, Seth Alan Woolley [seth AT positivism.org] wrote:
> You may have noticed recently that we've got some more advanced website
> redirecting going on and are rebuilding much of the old website
> infrastructure. We haven't heard much from the colo facility so we're
> simply moving forward as if we lost the data on the colocated server.

We've got reason to believe now that we *do* have backups available, though
we don't know how current they are. We still don't know the real state of
the down box and drive.

> If there are any users who wish to donate server space for a more
> decentralized mirror system that we can round-robin or who want to
> participate in a live backup system contact us in irc or send an email
> to Jeremy Blosser (nick: emrys).

After discussing this further, we believe that our best option for the
future is to get our primary web box on a paid line with an SLA (Service
Level Agreement) that will eliminate the kind of unattended outage we're
currently experiencing. Moving away from "a donated box under someone's
desk at work" to a paid SLA line is a next step in growing as a distro, and
we believe we have the resources available to cover the costs.

(Note that we're primarily talking about this for the web / dev support /
application server role. www.sourcemage, bugs.sourcemage, and probably
eventually the SCM. Depending on what course we pursue we will likely
continue to use ibiblio as our primarily download.sourcemage and
codex.sourcemage distribution site, since those things mostly need lots and
lots of bandwidth, and ibiblio has no shortage of that.)

Our identified needs for this host are:

* Full control of the box. No shared servers (and we have to be able to
pick to put our own OS on it, of course).
* At least 45mbps speeds, with a transfer cap sufficient for the above
services (we don't have enough records to know what this would be, but
100GB/month should be plenty).
* A *paid* SLA for at least the power and line, as close to 100% as
possible, with a recourse if there is downtime. Donations are nice but
they tend to make it hard to get serious support. We'll take discounts
if they're available, but nothing that compromises the level of service
we get to expect.
* Physically located somewhere where we have redundant on-site coverage
available by experienced sysadmins in our development community. We need
people available on the ground in a worst-case scenario to make sure
downtime is as short as possible, and we need more than one of them.

While we were looking at options like dedicated business lines to
centrally-located developer houses, I got a recommendation for a datacenter
local to me that has *very* reasonable prices and comes highly recommended.
They also happen to promote and support open source projects quite heavily.
Their prices start at $59/mo for colocation of any server we want on a
45mbs pipe with a 100GB/mo cap and a 100% SLA. Dedicated servers start at
$99/mo with the same pipe and a 2 hour hardware replacement SLA. I put out
a feeler to them, and while they don't think they can cut us a deal on a
dedicated server, they'll give us 15% off any colo plan.

URLS:
http://www.sprocketnetworks.com/
http://www.sprocketnetworks.com/colocation.htm
http://www.sprocketnetworks.com/dedicated.htm
http://www.sprocketnetworks.com/colocation_faq.htm
http://www.sprocketnetworks.com/dedicated_os.htm
http://www.sprocketnetworks.com/dedicated_options.htm

Look over those not just to see what their answers are, but how they
answer. I have it on good authority from someone who hosts there that they
mean what they say here. They are very flexible and reliable. And those
prices are too good to ignore.

As for local SMGL administration, I and two other guys are within a half
hour of that place. The other two (Dave Josephsen (superdave) and Mark
Bainter (shamgar)) aren't that active in SMGL development yet, but all
three of us are Sr. Systems Engineers responsible for keeping high-volume
corporate servers and services up 24x7x365. None of us tolerates outages
on our servers, and all of us know how to do what it takes to avoid
problems or fix them when they happen. So it's safe to say we'd be
well-covered for redundant local administration. :-)

Given all of this, I want to propose the following options. I'd like to
see us select one of these fairly quickly and move to implement next week.
I'd prefer to get some input from Kinetix on this, but I think it's more
important we get something established ASAP, and I think it's safe to say
after a three week outage that we can't leave things where they are right
now even after he comes back and gets us back up. If for some reason we
decide this just isn't the way to go, I'd still hope we can move something
forward next week so when he does get back we can get a solution in place
quickly.

Option A: Colocation

* I would purchase and build 2 identical servers.
* One would be deployed at sprocket, the other would stay at my house.
* Backups would run at least daily from the live server to the one at my
house.
* In case of any hardware failure, we'd have the backup available offsite
to replace any components or the whole thing (Dave and Mark already have
keys to my house to help cover the more informal servers that live here).
Turnaround time on a hardware failure would be the time it would take to
get to my house from wherever one of us was, get to the datacenter and
replace hardware.
* I would also purchase a year's coverage under their 'col1' colocation
plan.

Total cost would be around $2k for the servers (less if we tried to cut
corners, but I'd rather get stuff we can expect to last), plus $600 for the
first year of hosting. We'd want to plan to replace all hardware (both
servers) every 3 years or so, so we'd average around $1,200 per year.

Option B: Dedicated Server

* Hardware would be covered by them in their 2 hour SLA.
* I'd still do backups to a machine at the house, but it wouldn't need to
be a hardware match, and I have stuff that could cover that on hand.
Recovery would be time for them to fix or replace the broken bits + time
to restore from backup if necessary.
* I'd purchase a year of their 'AMD1' dedicated server option.

Total cost would be $1,200 per year. Hardware upgrades should be included
in this.

Main advantages of A are that we could probably get more hardware for the
money ($1,000 per server is based on a 64-bit box, probably with hardware
RAID) and we would own the hardware (which doesn't really matter to me, but
might to some).

Main advantages of B are that we need less money up front and should get
faster response time on hardware issues since hands, parts, and knowledge
would be on-site at all time. We'd also be able to get it up much more
quickly, probably before noon on Monday.

I personally go back and forth on which I prefer. Based on up-front costs
(but not average) B is cheaper, with the only real concern being that the
specs on that hardware might not be as nice as we might like; in particular
we may need to ask about a bigger hard drive. B is definitely a better
support option IMO. Other opinions?

With either option I should be able to front the money to get it going for
the first year, but I'd want to make as much of it back as I could, so I'd
also like to hear from people willing to make some donations fairly
quickly. For option A especially that would be important.

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