[clue-admin] Future Hosting Plans

[dennisjperkins at comcast.net]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Crawford Rainwater" <crawford.rainwater at linux-etc.com> 
To: clue-admin at cluedenver.org 
Sent: Monday, November 30, 2009 3:23:52 PM GMT -07:00 US/Canada Mountain 
Subject: Re: [clue-admin] Future Hosting Plans 

Folks: 

Comments below. 

----- clue-admin-request at cluedenver.org wrote: 
> 
> Hi Folks. 
> 
> Time is running shorter. The old thread on this is: 
> 
> http://cluedenver.org/pipermail/clue-admin/2009-June/003490.html 
> 

Jed, thanks for bringing this back up again. 

> A few points to consider: 
> 
> 3) Having our own server, virtual or otherwise, requires having a 
> real 
> sysadmin. I believe Crawford is willing to continue doing that job, 
> but I 
> wonder whether our needs rise to that level any more. 
> 

Yes, myself and Linux ETC will continue to do system administration work on the current CLUE server. 

There is still some need and since with CLUE's current hosting group I do not have access to the account to upgrade from CentOS v4.x to CentOS v5.x that would be the only "major" thing to consider. Otherwise minus a few hiccups now and then, it is not a problem. 

Jed does the backup of the CLUE web site (and Mailman archives?) which is quite helpful in the event of a DR. 

> 5) VPS or shared hosting frees us from having to worry about 
> hardware. 
> This is a very good thing, IMHO. It also gets redundant network 
> connections and UPS power. Not that we have 24/7 requirement, but in 
> the 
> past, when we've had outages, recovery timeframe was measured in days 
> required to find hardware, redo the OS install and relocate the box. 
> Restoring the website wasn't ever a big deal. Don't know about 
> Mailman. 
> 
> 6) Shared hosting plans are available that provide Mailman and shell 
> access. I haven't ever seen CVS available, but then I never looked for 
> it 
> either. Whether we even need shell access is debatable, but that 
> depends 
> on other factors. 
> 

SVN or CVS could be installed on the current system and things taken from there. I have not linked MailMan with SVN or CVS before though, but I can see that being a nice trick. The web site should not be a problem though. 

> 7) If we were to go with a typical shared hosting plan, we'd probably 
> need to rethink how we update the website. I've seen shared hosting 
> plans 
> that offer WebDAV. Other possibilities come to mind, some of them a 
> bit 
> goofy, but do-able. Probably not worth thinking about in detail at 
> this 
> point, but something to keep in mind if a plan to use shared hosting 
> looks likely. 
> 

For the CLUE Webmaster one additional avenue besides CLI could be using something like Drupal, Joomla, or similar. I would suggest a KISS method and limiting the access though since this could turn into a Twitter deal where everyone wants to comment on everything off the lists and on the site then. ;-) 

> 8) A shared hosting plan without shell access would mean coming up 
> with a 
> new way to do offsite backups. 
> 

Unless Jed wishes to step down with the current backup method, I would like to keep things as is personally. That said, it does cost some cash to have the VPS hosted whether it is with company A or company Z. I personally like the 99.9% uptime received from the currently hosting group as well as the huge change from "before VPS" days where as Jed mentioned finding hardware to put in dated system for things to run was a PITA (especially since Jeff, Jed, and I had to go through that a few times...along with probably a few others that helped donate parts too ;-) ). 

Dennis or Jed, do either of you know the ending date of the current VPS subscription at this time so that everyone knows that there is a deadline and when that is? 

I don't know. I need to read the emails and see what is being suggested. I'm in ND this week and It won't have Internet access some of the time, so I can't do much this week. 
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