[Systems] ping aslo master

[Bernie Innocenti]

[cc += lfaraone, pfmeec, cjg, acj, systems@]

Luke is in contact with the Wikimedia foundation for getting the
machines shipped once we get confirmation for the hosting.

In addition to these machines, Alexander Jones, a RIT student, found us
yet another 1U box of similar specs available from the CSH.

Summarizing:

 3x  Dual   2.5GHz AMD,  3-4GB RAM, 1x80GB HD
 1x  Single 2.4GHz Xeon,   ??? RAM, 2x18GB SCSI HD

Together, these boxes are likely to provide less processing power than
the dual-quad-core server we had in mind. Reliability would also be a
concern, but we probably need to make all components redundant anyway.

On the positive side, we're going to save $3000 from our IT budget and
provide a valuable opportunity for collaboration with both Wikimedia and
CSH, as David points out.

What remains to be seen, is who will physically rack the hardware and
perform the initial system installation and configuration. We already
have 4 virtual machine images that were configured and tuned during the
initial phase of clustering ASLO. We could hand them to a local sysadmin
who would just have to unpack them into a local filesystem and make them
boot. If it turns out to be difficult, we could install a fresh Ubuntu
Karmic system on top of which we'll rsync our filesystem images. Either
way, it may be a good challenge for sysadmin students.

If we're lucky, we may end up with enough ethernet cards and (managed)
switch ports to setup a second LAN for private traffic such as database,
nfs and syslog. We'd also need enough storage to backup all these machines.

If this scenario results in unacceptable overhead for RIT, we could
return to our original plan to get a new 2U machine shipped there.

Thoughts?


On 01/18/10 16:34, Stephen Jacobs wrote:
> Bernie should know where we are currently at with RIT.
> Last I heard we were still waiting to hear about hosting confirmation.
> 
> Would be very to see it happen with either RIT Research Computing or
> Computer Science House.  Research computing is more likely to be a more
> solid group to host with if it clears policy.  More of an official RIT
> tie and a 12 month per year facility.  Dunno how much of CSH activities
> die down over the sumer break.
> 
> On Jan 18, 2010, at 1:44 PM, David Farning wrote:
> 
>> CCing Bernie, and Prof. Jacobs.
>>
>> Hey Dogi, I have been focusing entirely on Ubuntu Sugar Remix for the
>> last 6 weeks. We really needed to get that project going in order to
>> establish vendor and oem relationships.  In order not to cause
>> additional friction with Redhat. I am laying low with the  RIT
>> project.
>>
>> I am fine with where ever you want to put ASLO.  I got a _little_
>> carried away splitting ASLO up in to separate machines.  It was a
>> fascinating technical problem with such an elegant solution.... which
>> ended up making everyone else's live harder.
>>
>> Just a thought, It looks like wikipedia is willing to donate some old
>> machines to host at RIT.  We could create some potentially valuable
>> partnerships by working with the RIT computer house and the networking
>> program to host ASLO on those machines at RIT.
>>
>> 1.  From a load POV if we off load ASLO, sunjammer can handle the
>> remaining load for at least several months....  This puts Bernie in
>> the position of acting proactive rather than reactively.
>>
>> 2.  We can probably create a relationship with Wikipedia to give
>> SL/RIT their old machines every year.  I understand their policy is to
>> replace machines every three years for space, power consumption, and
>> reliability reasons.
>>
>> 3.  I am not sure what the hosting policy at RIT is, but it would be
>> very cool if we could establish ASLO as signature project for the RIT
>> computer house.  If I remember correctly,  from my student days.
>> Getting real world experience on real world projects that we could put
>> on our resume was one of our primary goals.  Maintaining a system like
>> ALSO would qualify as that.
>>
>> Short term, this would be _much_ more work than sticking ASLO on a
>> faster machine.  But long term it could create some valuable
>> relationships and provide some students with some valuable experience.
>>
>> david
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Jan 13, 2010 at 2:33 PM, Stefan Unterhauser <dogi at sugarlabs.org> wrote:
>>> hi David,
>>>
>>> I m now already a month in Boston,
>>> my phone number is 617 909 2178,
>>> i restarted the VIGmeeting again ...
>>> but this time in #treehouse on OFTC
>>> http://me.etin.gs/treehouse/treehouse.minutes.20100113_1418.html
>>> as u can read there there hardware arriving
>>> what do u think?
>>> do u need help?
>>> please feel free to phone me


-- 
   // Bernie Innocenti - http://codewiz.org/
 \X/  Sugar Labs       - http://sugarlabs.org/