[SAC] QGIS servers

[Alex Mandel]

On 09/25/2013 10:08 AM, Richard Duivenvoorde wrote:
> Hi Alex,
> 
> thanks for your thourough answers, some comments from my side:
> 
>>> We have been investigating 'Dockers' to ease this separation, and make
>>> https://www.docker.io/
>> ah very similar to vagrant and other VM creation
>> tools. Copying a whole VM in and out is not hard.
> 
> Please someone correct me if I'm wrong, but Vagrant is about juggling
> around VM's, while Docker is more lightweight, more like separating
> environments with cgroups or virtualenv (but then on OS level)?
> 
> Pzl have a look [0] and [1] and correct me if wrong.

If I'm reading right docker is kind of like
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_private_server

Which means you could actually run it inside a VM if you want, but I
don't think that will have the results you're aiming for as ram/cpu
isn't specifically allocated, one process out of control could still
bring down other services. Where as running 2 VMs means you can crash
one without crashing the other because their ram is allocated separately
though they may share some cpu cycles.

> 
>>> I also investigated the costs of running a rented server (eg at hetzner:
>>> 2x2Tb disk, 32 gb RAM, i7-8core etc for 49 euro).
>>>
>> 1 year of hosting on this = purchase price of such a machine.
> 
> Is this really so? 600 euro (incl 19% tax) for such a server? I would
> think you needed at least two years (but then not having the support and
> harddisk guarantees).

Tax on the servers isn't that much, but you're right I forgot to check
current exchange rates, 1.5-2 years of hosting is closer to the cost of
a server. Feel free to poke around and see if you like something on
http://www.siliconmechanics.com/

We have not raised the question yet if anyone else would like to split
such a purchase we can also look at bigger hardware (still 1-2 U).

> 
> To me it seemed that it was hard to win from this Hetzner guys, but I'm
> fine with OSGeo providing such a server. It's not that we want to flee
> from the flock or so. Should I officially 'order' it here? Please let me
> know the exact costs (for specs see [2] as an example), and how to
> proceed then.
> 
> Anyway, first let's upgrade current VM, so I can split up the
> documentation/website builds from the serving dirs (currently there is
> no diskspace for this).
> 
Can we run this on another VM that already has sphinx like Projects or
Webextra?

> Regards and thanks for the work you do here,
> 
> Richard Duivenvoorde
> 
> [0]
> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/16647069/should-i-use-vagrant-or-docker-io-for-creating-an-isolated-envinronment
> 
> [1]
> https://www.slideshare.net/dotCloud/docker-at-djangocon-kencochranedockertalk2013
> 
> [2] http://www.hetzner.de/en/hosting/produkte_rootserver/ex40

Thanks,
Alex