Cees kindly setup a virtual server box commonly known as box1.squeakfoundation.org for us some months ago. Currently that server is hosting the new discuss.squeakfoundation.org mailing lists, the BFAV server, the SqueakMap server, the new or soon to be FTP/file site for Squeak, the development site (and probably the permanent site) for the new Squeak website, and perhaps other things I'm not thinking of at the moment.
The server we are paying for (we meaning those kind members of the community that donated money for the hosting) currently costs us about $28.50 per month. This server has a bit over 3GB of disk space and 64MB of ram. It is a virtual server meaning that we share the physical server with some unknown number of other virtual servers. We are managing with this configuration but it is getting quite tight. We are currently using somewhat more than our allotted 64MB of RAM and are into swap which significantly hurts performance on the virtual server which some of you may have noticed. Also the file space for the download site is currently using over 1.4GB of drive space and grows regularly (Each time a new set of updates is issued each new image/changes package adds about 10MB to the site.).
Cees and I discussed what to do to provide additional resources for current and future services. The first thought was to upgrade to the next level of the ByteMark virtual server account which would provide 128MB of RAM and 6GB of disk space. This would be a significant jump and would cost us about $51.50 per month (or $42.88 if we paid up front for a year at $514.50). This would provide significant breathing room but the memory alone would be eaten up pretty quickly by additional Squeak hosted websites (wikis, whatever) at about a rate of 8-24MB each.
The next thought was to get a full server. At first I thought this would be a big jump in cost but Cees was familiar with a company that provides hosting at a pretty good rate ( http://www.15minuteservers.com/ ). My current recommendation is that we start another round of fundraising to go ahead and prepay for a server from 15 Minute Servers for 2 years. The total cost for 2 years would be about $1438 (about 40% more than the cost of the next level ByteMark virutal server) and would provide a full server with 2GHZ+ AMD processor, 512MB RAM, 80GB hard drive space, and a terabyte of bandwidth each month. I'm confident that we can host a lot of services, almost certainly anything that comes up in the next 2 years, with that.
So what does everyone think? Can anyone suggest a better plan or have qualms about this?
If not I would like to suggest that we start a round of fundraising and let the money speak. If we can manage to raise $1438 dollars in the next few weeks then I think that will answer the question of whether or not we can afford to do this and whether or not the community thinks that it would be worthwhile. I should note that we already have a few hundred dollars that has already been donated for hosting in general so we are well on the way towards this goal already if we decide to use the funds in that way.
Ken
Two things I want to add to Ken's post: - Of course, 15minutes.com is just one random supplier (recommended to me by a colleague, he is quite picky, but that's all I know about them), alternatives are welcome; - The current war chest holds a bit over 400 euros, so the target for the fundraise is around 1000 dollars; - Regardless of what we decide to do, any money you contribute will be spent for this goal, so it is a good idea to surf to http://discuss.squeakfoundation.org/ and click that donation button if you haven't done so already. (ok, three things).
Am 26.04.2005 um 22:07 schrieb Cees De Groot:
Two things I want to add to Ken's post:
- Of course, 15minutes.com is just one random supplier (recommended to
me by a colleague, he is quite picky, but that's all I know about them), alternatives are welcome;
Squeak-ev.de is hosted on a server at hetzner.de:
AMD Athlon XP 3000+ 1 GB RAM 160 GB HDD, 350 GB traffic/month.
39 EUR, we are very pleased with their responsiveness (e.g. rebooting, fixing the hardware...). No need to buy 2 years of service (contract terminatable to the end of the month).
Marcus
Marcus
Yes. This does sound good.
My ability to read German is pretty close to Nil but from what I can make out this seems OK. If we decide to go with this we already have the funding for the next few months at least.
Are the manpages likely to be in German? ;)
Ken
On Tue, 2005-04-26 at 22:33 +0200, Marcus Denker wrote:
Am 26.04.2005 um 22:07 schrieb Cees De Groot:
Two things I want to add to Ken's post:
- Of course, 15minutes.com is just one random supplier (recommended to
me by a colleague, he is quite picky, but that's all I know about them), alternatives are welcome;
Squeak-ev.de is hosted on a server at hetzner.de:
AMD Athlon XP 3000+ 1 GB RAM 160 GB HDD, 350 GB traffic/month.
39 EUR, we are very pleased with their responsiveness (e.g. rebooting, fixing the hardware...). No need to buy 2 years of service (contract terminatable to the end of the month).
Marcus Marcus
Hmmm it seems a big leap:
$51.50 vs $28.50 is about 80% more.
Why we need so much more space? We can have some "usage plan" of the new server? We are short of hd space on the 3GB disk, now? bye bye
Ken Causey ha scritto in data 26/04/2005 21.57:
Cees kindly setup a virtual server box commonly known as box1.squeakfoundation.org for us some months ago. Currently that server is hosting the new discuss.squeakfoundation.org mailing lists, the BFAV server, the SqueakMap server, the new or soon to be FTP/file site for Squeak, the development site (and probably the permanent site) for the new Squeak website, and perhaps other things I'm not thinking of at the moment. [...]
On 4/27/05, Giovanni Giorgi giovanni.giorgi@siforge.org wrote:
Hmmm it seems a big leap:
$51.50 vs $28.50 is about 80% more.
The current GBP15 (EUR22) box from Bytemark is inadequate both in terms of disk space and memory. So we'll need to move up to the next level (128Mb/6GB), which is GBP27 (EUR39). Which is just as expensive as a full box from Hetzner (1G/160G).
(Michael: the Hetzner offering *is* a full root dedicated server)
I'm planning to get a box myself there. Squeak-ev has a box as well. Each of these boxen has 160G drivespace which we're likely not to completely need, so that would be a good basis for mutual disk-disk backup :-)
Am 27.04.2005 um 09:39 schrieb Cees De Groot:
On 4/27/05, Giovanni Giorgi giovanni.giorgi@siforge.org wrote:
Hmmm it seems a big leap:
$51.50 vs $28.50 is about 80% more.
The current GBP15 (EUR22) box from Bytemark is inadequate both in terms of disk space and memory. So we'll need to move up to the next level (128Mb/6GB), which is GBP27 (EUR39). Which is just as expensive as a full box from Hetzner (1G/160G).
(Michael: the Hetzner offering *is* a full root dedicated server)
Yes, they do have more expensive offers (more bandwith, even faster machines), but I would say these are not needed for most users.
This was different some time ago: The 39EUR server hardware used to be much slower, have less disk (40G), 256MB RAM, and 100GB/Month.
They continue to offer the old machines, with 100GB/Month it's only EUR 19.
I'm planning to get a box myself there. Squeak-ev has a box as well. Each of these boxen has 160G drivespace which we're likely not to completely need, so that would be a good basis for mutual disk-disk backup :-)
Marcus
Hi guys!
I have just in the last days been looking for a VPS (Virtual Private Server) myself (for squeak.se and other things) and after having looked at some of the top contenders (according to the grapewine):
linode.com, rimuhosting.com, jvds.com
I eventually ended up at unixshell.com. That is a brand new offering from tektonic.com (see http://www.tektonic.net/vds.php) using Xen (a much better technology for VPS) instead of UML and yesterday I signed up for the "96" plan ($20). Here you can see their plans:
http://www.unixshell.com/index.php?page=services
The form said that it probably will take a few days, I think they are a bit swamped, I will check their forums later today. But anyway, if it works good then we could get a 192 machine (192Mb RAM, 16Gb disk, 192 Gb traffic) for only $40.
But I am only posting this as yet another data point. :) The "old machine offer" Marcus mentioned sounded like a very nice price too.
regards, Göran
As a side note, I ordered a virtual machine yesterday from Hetzner for me privately. Service was prompt and efficient (almost German, heh ;-)), and after configuring the box as a secure remote Samba server (OT - Samba+Shorewall+OpenVPN do a nice job) I'm now uploading the contents of my fileserver at home.
Bandwidth looks excellent, price is probably unbeatable, we have a couple of 'satisfied customer references' (with the added benefit that we can do cross-backups on the Hetzner local net which doesn't get charged against the bandwidth allowance), so I am very much in favour of setting up box2.squeakfoundation.org over there. It'll be a bit of work to get everything over (but not as much as the last time, we know the issues now), but we ran out of breath sooner than we expected on the current machine and I'll be more than happy to pump some time into this sysadmin chore.
Yes, I'm satisfied if everone else is. My only concern is my lack of German but we seem to have enough skilled German speakers in the community that we won't have any problems communicating with the people at Hetzner.
Ken
On Fri, 2005-04-29 at 11:42 +0200, Cees De Groot wrote:
As a side note, I ordered a virtual machine yesterday from Hetzner for me privately. Service was prompt and efficient (almost German, heh ;-)), and after configuring the box as a secure remote Samba server (OT - Samba+Shorewall+OpenVPN do a nice job) I'm now uploading the contents of my fileserver at home.
Bandwidth looks excellent, price is probably unbeatable, we have a couple of 'satisfied customer references' (with the added benefit that we can do cross-backups on the Hetzner local net which doesn't get charged against the bandwidth allowance), so I am very much in favour of setting up box2.squeakfoundation.org over there. It'll be a bit of work to get everything over (but not as much as the last time, we know the issues now), but we ran out of breath sooner than we expected on the current machine and I'll be more than happy to pump some time into this sysadmin chore.
So far I haven't heard any complaints. However, as this is community money we're spending, I just want to ask a final time (a sort of "speak up now or be silent forever" ;-)):
PROPOSAL: We (The Ones That Manage The Paypal Account) will order a 'Entry' machine with Hetzner, 149 Euro setup cost, 39 Euro per month, for a XP3000+, 1G RAM, 160G disk equipped machine with 350GB traffic allowance per month.
If you are against this proposal, please state so in the coming week, preferably stating an alternative, reasons against it, etcetera.
In a week, we (TOTMTPA) will evaluate any opposition, weigh it, and decide.
On 4/29/05, Ken Causey ken@kencausey.com wrote:
Yes, I'm satisfied if everone else is. My only concern is my lack of German but we seem to have enough skilled German speakers in the community that we won't have any problems communicating with the people at Hetzner.
I'm quite sure it's only their website that's 100% German. Their support staff is bound to speak English.
Regards,
Cees
Cees De Groot wrote:
So far I haven't heard any complaints. However, as this is community money we're spending, I just want to ask a final time (a sort of "speak up now or be silent forever" ;-)):
PROPOSAL: We (The Ones That Manage The Paypal Account) will order a 'Entry' machine with Hetzner, 149 Euro setup cost, 39 Euro per month, for a XP3000+, 1G RAM, 160G disk equipped machine with 350GB traffic allowance per month.
I'm not exactly sure what the arrangement is here but I consider the AMD AthlonXP to be obsolescent technology at this date.
My counter proposal is an AMD Semperon processor.
My argument is that the semperon allows us to take advantage of the latest system architecture at negligible extra cost. The principal advantage of which being better memory bandwidth and MUCH better latency.
As a universal principal, NEVER skimp on the quality of either the motherboard or the RAM.
For a server machine, the HD is all important.
My counterproposal on the HD is to select two of these:
http://www.seagate.com/cda/products/discsales/marketing/detail/0,1081,645,00...
and run them in a RAID 1 configuration. The down side is that you'll get half the total capacity, the upside is that hardware reliability (provided the server is adequately maintained) will be MUCH less of an issue, also read latencies/throughput should benefit... (though consumer grade RAID controllers have shown them selves to be rather weak... =\ )
Personal testimonial:
I have two instances of a slightly older version of this exact same drive ( UDMA/100) and use them in separate computer. They are darn good drives. Very well made.
I selected them because they are single platter drives which, in theory, should mean that their bearings should last longer despite their relatively high RPM....
On 4/30/05, Alan Grimes alangrimes@starpower.net wrote:
I'm not exactly sure what the arrangement is here but I consider the AMD AthlonXP to be obsolescent technology at this date.
Errr... Alan - this is a package deal, no choices wrt hardware. Oh, and I don't believe in this obscolesence thing, either. We're still happily running The InternetOne on a rack full of 700Mhz to 1GHz PIII processors with Ultra160 SCSI drives. Quite obsolete, not?
Are you seriously defending *buying* our own hardware? Because I'm firmly against that - if a drive breaks, someone needs to deplete the cash stock, go to the store, buy a new drive, go to the datacenter, .... etcetera.
Cees De Groot wrote:
On 4/30/05, Alan Grimes alangrimes@starpower.net wrote:
I'm not exactly sure what the arrangement is here but I consider the AMD AthlonXP to be obsolescent technology at this date.
Errr... Alan - this is a package deal, no choices wrt hardware. Oh, and I don't believe in this obscolesence thing, either. We're still happily running The InternetOne on a rack full of 700Mhz to 1GHz PIII processors with Ultra160 SCSI drives. Quite obsolete, not?
It depends on the question. If you are asking about purchacing, you always buy the "current" generation of technology.
If you are asking about maintaining an existing system, you only ask "Is it still doing the job?"
In that sense both my 486 and my Athlon 800 are still useful (though seldom used) machines. (I wish my 486 was still reliable and supported both it's best CPU and video card at the same time..)
Are you seriously defending *buying* our own hardware? Because I'm firmly against that - if a drive breaks, someone needs to deplete the cash stock, go to the store, buy a new drive, go to the datacenter, .... etcetera.
Agreed. -- I retract my previous comments.
squeak-dev@lists.squeakfoundation.org
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Alan Grimes -
Cees De Groot -
Giovanni Giorgi -
goran.krampe＠bluefish.se -
Ken Causey -
Marcus Denker -
Michael Rueger