Developer Only Discussion List

[Adam Clark <adamsgl AT dhbit.ca>]

On Thu, Oct 20, 2005 at 12:12:21AM -0500, Jeremy Blosser (emrys) wrote:
> On Oct 19, Adam Clark [adamsgl AT dhbit.ca] wrote:
> > Now I've seen the suggestions and I think it would be a great idea to 
> > have SMGL-purchased servers.  I can see this taking some time though, 
> > for a few reasons - a) pieces need to be purchased and assembled before 
> > the system can even have an install done, b) financially, SMGL doesn't 
> > have things in place yet (as far as I understand), and I'm sure other 
> > factors as to where would really be a good place to host the system 
> > could take some time as well.
> 
> If we go with a dedicated server as we've been discussing, (a) is moot.
> The server would be provided by the datacenter as soon as we requested it.

Sure, I meant the context to be for a co-located server on that point, 
hence 'SMGL-purchased servers'.

> As for (b), as discussed I'm planning to front at least the first year.
> I'll take donations to make back what I can but it's covered regardless.
> A year is a decently long time... we'll either grow even more over the next
> year and be in a place next year where more people can contribute, or we
> won't grow and will decide to go back to free hosting somewhere else.  We
> need something dedicated with an SLA, and if we can even try it for a year
> that's something significant.
> 
> The location question (we'll call it (c)) was discussed in the other
> thread; I didn't really hear any objections to sprocketdata.  It has a
> *lot* going for it, more than any other place I can think of.

So is that what we're going for?  I'm not sure, by the other posts, if 
this is where we're definitely heading or not.

> > I would like to make the argument though that the location where things 
> > are hosted based on who we have 'available' currently is moot, or should 
> > be a very low priority.  We've seen turnover at every level in the SMGL 
> > organization, and it's entirely likely that whoever we may have admin an 
> > SMGL server (or servers) at the physical level now, will probably not be 
> > the same person or persons who's adminning it 6 months, or a year, or 3 
> > years down the road.  I agree we should have an organization that's got 
> > an SLA, can replace bits for us, etc.  But where we put servers based on 
> > who's at what position in the SMGL structure should fall to a much lower 
> > priority, imho.
> 
> I disagree that it's a low priority.  With all due respect, the physical
> location of the servers is an overriding factor in the current downtime.

Not really - if the server was a paid-for co-located server, it would 
have been trivial to have a hard drive ordered and replaced by the 
technicians on hand.  But, it wasn't.  It was a hobby server provided 
for free, by me, as part of my 'personal stuff' at the centre.  

> If the server was somewhere where more than one SMGLer could have reached
> it, we could have gotten a rebuild moving much more quickly.  A server

That's only true in the cast of a co-located box - and from what you've 
mentioned above, it seems the lean is toward a dedicated server.  A 
dedicated server means no SMGL'er has access to it physically, whether 
there's 50 SMGL techs in the area, or 0.


> As for turnover, the three local admins that have volunteered in DFW would
> be committed to maintaining this server whether we kept with SMGL or not.
> Even if all three of us stopped using SMGL we would maintain our
> responsibilities for that server until someone or somewhere else was found.
> That's just how we do things.  Regardless, if anything the turnover is even

That's very kind of everyone involved, but everyone could disappear or 
decide to not volunteer any longer at any time.  Probably unlikely, but 
I still don't see the value of having an SMGL tech. physically around if 
a) there's an SLA on a co-located box, or b) it's a dedicated server.

> Can you give us an idea of what our HD utilization was on the old server?
> Also, any numbers you have on monthly transfer would be very useful.

Well, the backups total close to 800MB, but there's a lot of old cruft 
that was in our 'www' directory that eventually could have been cleaned 
out.

The monthly transfer numbers were stored on the wonderful hard drive 
that refuses to spin up.  From the best of my recollection, the 
download.sm.org was taking a couple of hundred GB/mo, but the website 
itself was quite low, probably under 10GB/mo.

> I think we would all like to see a server back up at your location ASAP
> with whatever latest backup we had so we can get in and assess the
> situation and at least have some kind of bugzilla.  I would say you
> shouldn't buy any hardware yet, assuming what you have is at least enough
> to get the box operational.  I'm waiting on some final quotes from sprocket
> on various hardware configurations; once I have this I'm pretty sure we're
> ready to move forward on that option unless there's an overriding reason
> not to.  If we do go that route we could use any money you would've spent
> on hard drives toward the dedicated box, but of course that's entirely up
> to you.

From what I gather, bugzilla is the highest priority at the moment, and 
if a dedicated server is where we're going, I'm not going to worry about 
setting up a new system for a few day's worth of activity... though, 
from Eric's response today, I'm really not too sure where we're going.  
I'll reply to his separately. 

At this point though, I'll try and have our bugzilla up and useable 
ASAP.

-A

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