[wplug-board] Re: [wplug-plan] Virtual Hosting

Patrick Wagstrom pwagstro at andrew.cmu.edu
Mon Jun 18 15:14:11 EDT 2007


> Regarding what the budget is, that's for the board to decide.  We worked
> under the assumption that we could spend no more than $25 / per month on
> hosted services.  We also worked under the assumption that it would be
> appropriate for the board to decide what name is on the account and where
> the  payments come from.

That's why we need more information and some of these questions answered.  I'm not trying to poo-poo this idea, in fact, I'm very much for it.  I've looked into Linode and we can get a very good setup that will most likely meet all of our needs for a very low price.

> As far as competitive shopping, I will draw that up.

I posted a message to WPLUG-plan a few months ago with a few months ago with a few comparison points.  I don't have linode in the list there, but I really should.  You can use that as a starting point to compare everything.  I too think that Linode is the best choice, but having it written down is helpful.

IMPORTANT: make sure you ask about IRC bots.  Many places don't allow them.  I'm fine with killing monkeybot, but some people seem to actually like having it around.

> The overall outcome of our meeting was that for under $300 / year, we can
> eliminate all dependencies on CMU or other charitable hosting sources.  We
> have a plan to proceed on this path, pending board approval.

Yup, that's exactly what we're trying to do.  Unless a real hosting provider offers us something for free with a formal agreement, what you're doing is the best choice.
 
> If we decide to use another provider (e.g. pair), it doesn't have to alter
> our plans too much.  The plan of attack for eliminating hosting 
> dependencies is loosely coupled to the actual service we choose!

Not entirely, we clearly want something that gives us root over our own virtual machine.  Pair networks does not do that, you're on a shared server with significant restrictions in place on what you can actually do.

> Clearly the board must be willing to spend some money here.  Otherwise 
> we'd be trading one free service for another, getting nowhere in the 
> process, and wasting our time.  We want to move forward, because we want
> to do bigger and better things than worry about where to put a wiki and 10
> odd mailing lists.

We've already discussed it and are perfectly willing to spend money here, that's part of the reason for dues.  We've discussed it in the past and I think everyone is in favor of it.  People mentioned free services, but they're not going to pan out -- and we need a level of reliability that is greater than a rack that happens to sit in someones basement.

Good work on looking at all of this.  I really appreciate the effort.

--Patrick




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