[Systems] [SLOBS] Hosting at RIT

[Tomeu Vizoso]

On Wed, Dec 16, 2009 at 23:19, Bernie Innocenti <bernie at codewiz.org> wrote:
> So we have a deal for free hosting at RIT.
>
> Ivan and I have been discussing hardware options over the fast few
> weeks. We believe we have found a decent 8-core machine for
> approximately $3000.  Ivan offered to pay a share of this sum.
> I believe we have $2000 earmarked for infrastructure.

Sounds good to me because:

- we have some services in solarsail that are being too slow (trac,
and wiki in smaller measure),

- sunjammer has ASLO, which is likely to start taking more resources
as children from Uruguay return to school and as more OLPC deployments
get internet connection,

- we have money earmarked for hardware,

- you have been leading the infrastructure team and are the best to
decide which hardware we need.

Regards,

Tomeu


> The use we plan to do for this new machine is:
>
> 1) replace our aging main machine solarsail, which runs
>   www, wiki, trac, planet and mailing lists
>
> 2) running aslo, which is currently saturating the processor
>   on sunjammer, but should have plenty of room for growth on
>   this box
>
> 3) House some of the small virtual machines that are currently
>   hosted in disparate locations
>
> 4) host a few unrelated domains previously hosted on solarsail
>
> Point (4) may sound a bit controversial, but I think it's a fair deal,
> considering that we've been using solarsail for as long as 2 years
> without paying. All our infrastructure is currently running on third
> party hardware usually shared by other services.
>
> This not only reduces operating costs for us ($0 so far ;-), it is
> primarily a way to maintain friendly work relationships with our
> partners and sponsors. I ultimately believe that friendly agreements
> with people we trust personally are worth more than any support
> contract.
>
> On the other hand, having our infrastructure fragmented in too many
> disparate locations is costing us a lot in terms of sysadmin time, so
> we're looking to consolidate our services on fewer physical machines in
> 2-3 locations.
>
> It's not yet decided how much we'll rely on virtualization to partition
> our hardware resources. There are good technical arguments both in favor
> and against it. I'm not strongly opinionated either way, so I guess we
> may decide what works best for us on a service-by-service basis.
>
> Thoughts?
>
> --
>   // Bernie Innocenti - http://codewiz.org/
>  \X/  Sugar Labs       - http://sugarlabs.org/
>
> -------- Forwarded Message --------
> From: Paul Mezzanini <pfmeec at rit.edu>
> To: Bernie Innocenti <bernie at codewiz.org>
> Cc: Stephen Jacobs <sxjics at rit.edu>, David Farning
> <dfarning at sugarlabs.org>, Charles J Gruener <cjg9411 at rit.edu>
> Subject: Re: Sugar Labs hosting at RIT
> Date: Wed, 16 Dec 2009 12:06:14 -0500
>
> Charles and I had a good long talk about what hardware is available
> and its capabilities.  We are both in agreement that the hardware
> available for donation is inadequate for your needs.
>
> What we propose is:
> Sugarlabs buys the primary server and ships to RC.
> RC racks / physically installs the machine and hands IPMI access to
> sugarlabs for final config.
> RC adds the primary server to its backup system for nightly backups.
> RC provides a passive failover server located in RCs virtual
> infrastructure.
>
> How does this sound?  Final details can be hashed out after we get the
> groundwork set.
>
> -paul
>
>
> On Dec 16, 2009, at 11:11 AM, Bernie Innocenti wrote:
>
>> On Tue, 2009-12-15 at 22:14 -0500, Paul Mezzanini wrote:
>>> I need to run it by my boss. How much bandwidth do you estimate you
>
>>> use?  I need to see if I need to get approval from the networking
>>> team
>>
>> Currently, we serve ~1000 reqs/sec at peak time, using up to
>> ~15Mbit/s for a few hours in the morning. We estimate to double
>> or triple these numbers within 6-12 months.
>>
>> The actual content is already being off-loaded to a CDN. We may
>> further reduce bandwidth by offloading static files to machines
>> hosted by the FSF or MIT.
>>
>>
>>> I may be able to provide a backup machine in ESX for failover too.
>>> There are other hardware options available depending on if you need
>
>>> full virt or para virt. Also on how much io you really need.
>>> Charles (cc'd on this) can chime in on exactly what he has.
>>
>> As long as performance does not suffer, I have no preference.
>> I guess full virtualization leaves us a little more flexibility in
>> updating the kernel.
>>
>> We do limited I/O at this time because our workload is read-mostly
>> and we have a lot of RAM to cache disks. We're saturating the CPU
>> much before we start seeing any disk trashing.
>>
>> --
>>   // Bernie Innocenti - http://codewiz.org/
>> \X/  Sugar Labs       - http://sugarlabs.org/
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> SLOBs mailing list
> SLOBs at lists.sugarlabs.org
> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/slobs
>



-- 
«Sugar Labs is anyone who participates in improving and using Sugar.
What Sugar Labs does is determined by the participants.» - David
Farning