On 20.09.2017, at 19:09, Levente Uzonyi leves@caesar.elte.hu wrote:
Hi All,
I mostly agree with Dave's list. We basically have two options: A) go where the SFC can get us free hosting B) pay for hosting
A) would be a viable option if we could easily migrate the services from one server to another. It's Tobias who manages the servers atm, so if he's okay with moving them around, then we can keep on doing this.
B) is something the Board has to investigate. How much can we afford to spend on hosting a year? I doubt 2-3k usd/year would be sustainable. Rackspace is rather pricey, probably because of their support, but we hardly ever use that. Other providers, like Hetzner[1] or RamNode[2], offer (really) cheap virtual servers. We could probably keep the servers running for less than 400 euros/year.
Levente
[1] https://www.hetzner.com/virtual-server?country=us [2] https://ramnode.com/vps.php
I personally use [netcup](https://www.netcup.de/) for netshed.de. I can ask them whether they are willing to give us a discount. Maybe as donation to squeak e.v. or something…
Best regards -Tobias
On Tue, 12 Sep 2017, David T. Lewis wrote:
Adding the box-admins list.
On Tue, Sep 12, 2017 at 03:50:19PM +0200, Bert Freudenberg wrote:
Oh @#$%.
An excellent concise summary.
A few initial thoughts from my point of view. We should:
- Make sure we have backups, and ability to recover from the backups,
for all the services.
- Determine our actual Rackspace costs, beginning January 2018, if
we no longer have the "discount", and if we continue to operate in our current server configuration. I think that the costs are in the neighborhood of $2000 - $3000 (US dollars) annually for our current server configuration, but we should confirm the actual numbers.
- Figure out what the minimal Rackspace costs will be if we migrate
services to a smaller number of servers on Rackspace, and shut down the unneeded servers to minimize billing costs. For example, I could migrate the squeaksource.com service to another box on Rackspace, and turn off the billing for dan.box.squeak.org. I think we are using eight virtual servers now because it is easy and it is "free", but maybe we only really need one or two or three.
- Make a plan for life after Rackspace. Or maybe with Rackspace, if
they are still in the low cost virtual server business.
Dave
p.s. Tim Cook can sell a smart phone for $1000. So what's up with the pricing strategy on our Squeak swag? I am a happy owner of a genuine SQLogo coffee mug, but I rarely brag about it to my friends, because it only cost me about $15.
This mug is truly an aspirational product. If I had been allowed to spend^h^h^h^h^hinvest $100 on this mug, I would be proud as a peacock and the extra revenue could have funded another virtual server or two.
;-)
On Tue, Sep 12, 2017 at 3:46 PM, Brett Smith brett@sfconservancy.org wrote:
Hi everyone,
I have good news and bad news for you today, so I???ll start with the bad news. Many of you are relying on Rackspace???s OSS discount to host servers for your project. Unfortunately, Rackspace just informed us yesterday that they???ll be ending the program at the end of the year. The entire business is shifting focus away from running their own cloud infrastructure, to providing support in the Big Three clouds, so as part of that they???re ending incentive programs structured around their cloud.
Conservancy hosts our own servers through this program, and so we???re already reaching out to other cloud providers to see if they might be willing to offer something similar. We realize it would be ideal if we could find a similar replacement program that covers each of you separately, and we???ll be trying to do that first. If you have contacts at hosting providers that we should be talking to about providing such a service, please let us know; this is a big enough deal that we???re eager to talk to anybody who might help. If they???re sufficiently generous, we may consider recognizing them as an in-kind sponsor on our web site.
If you???re affected by this, it would probably be prudent to start planning how you???ll migrate your servers off Rackspace to another provider. I realize that???s difficult to fully plan without knowing where you???re going, but at least it would be helpful to review your system configurations and make sure you understand what you need to migrate. You might also consider if there are ways you could consolidate or streamline your servers. Rackspace???s OSS discount program is *extremely* generous; we might find a similar program that is merely *very* generous.
Alternatively, if you???re willing to pay Rackspace for hosting, you can do that too if you have the funds. Your Rackspace bills (which are usually zeroed about by the discount) are in our Subversion server along with the rest of your financial records, usually under Expenses/Rackspace/. If you need help with accessing that, just let me know.
If you don???t currently have an OSS discount account with Rackspace, but you were thinking about getting one, I???m afraid that???s no longer available.
If you want to talk with us about this change for any reason, it???s probably best to do so through your specific project alias. I???m following all those conversations and can follow up there. I???ll keep you updated about our progress in finding a replacement program.
Best regards, ??? -- Brett Smith