[steering] Canoworms-tastic, Batman (was RE: isaac's design)

[genghis@members.evolt.org]

On Thu, 2002-12-12 at 15:51, Martin Burns wrote:

[Much snippage]

So - to summarise:

1)  We have 3 boxes in Co-lo with Ron for web

2)  They serve fewer than 100,000 web pages a month

[Opinion #A:  WTF?   WTFF?  That's *outrageous*. ]

3.  Almost all of our bandwidth (and the other 2 boxes)
    goes on list traffic

4.  Evolt.org has access to a server which can probably
    handle our mail.  It should not need relays since it's
    configured to a) not do RDNS lookups relayed by localhost
    and b) it's on a 10Mbps line out to the world.

[Opinion #B:  We should give some serious thought to ditching
LEO and moving its traffic to EOUK]

[Opinion #C:  This would make relay*.eo redundant]

5.  At that point, in all honesty, the remainder of evolt web
    would probably be best served through a hosted account,
    not 3 dedicated servers.

6.  But we want TEO, AEO/FEO (maybe we should call 'em
    VEO, for vapour?  >:-) ), and whatever MEO turns into as
    well.

7.  That could all go on a second Rackshack box like eouk
    *IF* we ditched Oracle, which for us is either rubbish,
    unfriendly to our schema, or unfixably misconfigured.

[Opinion #D:  We should replace Oracle with {Postgres|Mysql},
change DB connections, and do it.]

[Opinion #E:  If this _temporarily_ breaks things like the
tip harvester,  we can handle it.]

[Opinion #F:  ...is a long one, and cuts to the point of my
overall argument.

We *cannot* sustain this setup, and we *should not* sustain it
even if we had the money, which we don't - because:

*  Evolt.org should be about best practice.  Adding boxes is the
   way to solve things when you've got a T1 you're not paying
   for.  If you don't have that T1, 'best practice' is to use
   dedicated, managed hosting.  3 boxes for a site load this
   small is just wrong, dammit!  :-)

*  Evolt.org is (should also be, at least) also about thesite
   being a template for usage by our members as an educational
   tool.  Thesite would cost a *fortune* to replicate.

But mostly, it's about this:  2x $99/month means evolt.org can
appeal for a realistic amount of funds from members with an
actual expectation of receiving them.  20 people at $10/month
and we're covered.  Game over.

And yes, it *is* urgent.  We're taking a service from Ron which
he's carrying the cost for, and it's a cost we haven't got a
fucking prayer of raising.  The fact that he's OK with that for
the time being isn't really relevant at all.

That's probably a big enough mouthful of controversy.

I want us to re-do all the web services as well, but that can wait
for another discussion.  I'm certain that a redesign doesn't come
close to getting is where we want to be, astounding though Isaac
and company are.

--
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John Handelaar

T +44 20 8933 1494       M +44 7930 681789
F +44 870 169 7657   E john@userfrenzy.com
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