[Finance] Future Hosting finance position

[Martin Paul Burns]

David wrote on 17/02/2004 05:56:29:

> "Martin Burns" <martin at easyweb.co.ukrote:
> > While I think that it's been absolutely excellent that we've relied
> > (and at the moment continue to rely) on hosting donated by
> individuals,
> > ...I think it's non-ideal to rely on personally-provided [hosting
> service]
> >
> > a) it depends on the ability and desire of a small number of people.
> > One or two people no longer being able and/or willing provide hosting
> > could kill the org at short notice and that is not an appropriate risk
> > for us to take. When Dan gave up hosting *eo, he gave us very, very
> > fair notice. When Ron gave up hosting *eo, he gave us short, but just
> > about manageable notice. There is no guarantee that that would happen
> > in future. Not having off-site backups for either leo or weo at
> present
> > makes me even more concerned about this.
>
> i agree completely with this.  backups are essential, some failover plan
> would be expected, and ... errgh -- donated hosting is like living with
> your parents.  while kind, very cost effective, and "friendly", it comes
> with it's own sets of problems.

That's a really useful way of looking at it Dave that encapsulates a lot of
what I was trying to explain.

>  if we *can* sustain our own hosting, we
> should, if only to not burden the generosity of our members, but also so
> that we can know exactly if, when and why our situation may be becoming
> precarious.

Absolutely - being able to be this transparent is a grown-up way for evolt
to behave.

>
> > c) we can afford not to. As I understand it (Dave/Elfur, correct me if
> > I'm wrong), we have enough cash in the bank to guarantee sensible
> > commercial hosting for a good leo/deo/beo box for a *year*.
>
> i can't correct you because i don't know the whole story but... what
> would it cost?

Not sure what the full (including weo) picture would cost, but if it helps,
the current box hosting leo/beo/deo costs $99/month + taxes. You'd get
better spec'ed boxes for that money now.

>  to clarify (what i know so far of) our finanical
> situation, there is less than $300 in the bank account, at the moment
> (the initial deposit was just under $600, but at least one of the old
> checks in this deposit were returned unpaid, and i'm still waiting for
> the bank to respond back with copies of the bounced items).

I was going by
http://lists.evolt.org/sysadminarchive/2003-August/000765.html which
suggested otherwise.

However, we do have pledges for (iirc - John, fill in the blanks here?)
about $200/month, provided we're actually going to use it.

>  Marlene mentioned recently that she's received another check from Amazon
(but
> didn't mention the amount) and i don't have access to the current Paypal
> balance, but presume it is substancial.

That's probably where the cash is living. In which case it'll take even
*longer* to translate into a working safety net.

> the more interesting questions to me are:

> 1) do we know what it *costs* to host ourselves for a year?
Yes, that is the pertinent question. Not sure of exact amounts and
requirements, but it's something our sysadmin brethren could help us with.
However, what I'm trying to get at here is the principle that if we *can*
afford to do so, we should.

> 3) how much bandwidth are we consuming monthly?

For leo, deo & beo:
http://bandwidth.ev1servers.net/RSbw1.cgi?cfg=40_225.cfg&log=216.40.225.247
_113
averaging 2304MB/day (so probably under 70Gig/Month which is 10% of our
quota).

There's a publically accessible page giving traffic info for weo, but I
can't remember where.

We've also done a *lot* of work getting beo mirrors, which maybe save about
250GB/Month

>  4) are all, some, one, or none
> of the systems currently Cold Fusion on Windows?
Yes - weo (and teo), with SQLServer as the DB.

> can these services be
> migrated to open source platforms on commodity hardware in a competively
> priced 1U of rack-estate somewhere?

Not in their present form, no, although CF on Linux with MySQL or
PostgreSQL as a DB are probably possible, given the time to make the
changes (which wouldn't be insignificant).

> um, pardom my ignorance, but whose generosity are we currently enjoying,
> and where?

leo/beo/deo are running from a Linux box provided by the UK evolters
(detail: me, william, garrett & Mike King providing cash and John providing
vast amounts of sysadmin goodness) which lives at ev1servers (formerly
Rackshack) in Houston.

weo/teo are running from a Win2k box paid for and sysadmin'd by Jeff. Not
sure where it actually lives.

>  are we (at least) in a commercial facility, or is
> weo/leo/beo running on a commodore 64 in someone's spare bathroom? ;-)

Cheers
Martin