[Mapserver-users] Hosting Co-op (was PostGIS hosting?)

[Tyler Mitchell]

Let me throw out an item for discussion among the group.  But first a 
slight justification for my enthusiasm.

The hosting beast is, in my mind, a very major problem.  It gives Open 
Source naysayers ammo by suggesting that requirements are so complex that 
you need an advanced administrator to run them.  It also suggests that 
this technology is not in common enough use to bank on yet.  Also, as many 
know, normal ISP hosts lack support for many requirements which can be 
very frustrating and limit any use of PostGIS and MapServer, in 
particular.

I certainly don't agree with all these conclusions but with them in mind, 
only geeks who have a fast computer and high speed Internet connection can 
even fathom setting up a server, or only well established companies that 
have good bandwidth and resources.  This problem must be overcome to 
provide corporate IT and client decision-makers some more comfort.

I know the demand for a solution is out there, but that it is quite often 
too many small potatoes to make it worthwhile as a commercial venture. 
Therefore, I suggest a cooperative, non-profit solution to the problem.

As Paul pointed out, there are remote dedicated servers available for 
leasing.  From my own research (including Paul's link), they start at 
about US$150 per month and go upwards depending on system requirements. 
The base price on another provider was US$300.   They include Internet 
connectivity (usually redundant), security, UPS power backup, backup power 
generators, 24/7 network monitoring, email addresses, etc.  The user has 
full "root" access to the machine so that all additional required 
components could be installed (i.e. PostGIS and MapServer). You get the 
picture.

Therefore, I suggest we gauge interest in this type of approach.  If there 
are enough people interested in sharing the costs - they could ultimately 
be very low per member.  I would like to open up further discussion on 
this through this list.  If for no other reason than to gauge: 1) how many 
people would be interested, 2) to further discuss the options.

What you can do:
- Respond to the mailing list for further discussion
- Register your vote for or against the idea at: 
http://www.misterpoll.com/3195114918.html
- Contribute your ideas at: 
http://mapserver.gis.umn.edu/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?HostingCooperative

What do you think?

Tyler

postgis-users-bounces at postgis.refractions.net wrote on 03/22/2004 11:26:01 
PM:

> Hi,
> 
> Does anyone have any reccomended hosting providers that will include 
PostGIS
> (and a lot of storage space)?
> We have tried pgHoster.com and had an absolutely dreadful experience. As
> such, we are not interested in them or their sister company 
gishosting.net.
> 
> What we are hoping for are:
> 
> SSH access
> PostGIS with a very generous amount of hard disk space
> MySql:  For php app related storage
> PHP:  For postnuke, phpForum, mantis, etc.
> Tomcat or Resin:  For GeoServer
> E-mail:  POP3, e-mail forwarders, and spam filtering
> Fair pricing on bandwidth as the sites traffic increases