[SAC] Server specifications

[Jason Birch]

Thanks for the endorsement Daniel.  

I believe that Frank has already added iWeb to the wiki.  I'd prefer to
start with a single server, but splitting out project tools from
bandwidth-intensive items like downloads really makes a lot o sense.

Jason

-----Original Message-----
From: Daniel Morissette [mailto:dmorissette at mapgears.com] 
Sent: Thursday, October 19, 2006 12:12
To: sac at sac.osgeo.org
Cc: dev at webcommittee.osgeo.org; Robert Bray; Donald Mennie
Subject: Re: [SAC] Server specifications

Jason Birch wrote:
> 
> I'm currently favouring fully managed servers such as Rackspace and 
> LiquidWeb because of the security they give us for uptime, and because

> they take away the need for us to pay for day-to-day OS and core 
> application management.  I have added a couple unmanaged servers to 
> the list, and if anyone has any particularly good experiences with 
> high-availability co-los, I'd appreciate some guidance so that we can 
> present some alternatives.  However, I don't know that we want to take

> on responsibility for our own hardware; our resources are stretched 
> enough as it is.
> 

If you're looking for alternatives, FYI the dl.maptools.org server has
been hosted at iWeb on a dedicated server (iWeb MyServerNow) for almost
a year now and everything has gone very smoothly so far. See
http://iweb.ca/en/index.php?page=dedie

I did a quick search and didn't find the SLA terms, but I believe Frank
has his gdal.org domain hosted there as well and could comment on his
experience.

Maptools.org generated 189.6GB of downloads in September and this number
is increasing by 10-15GB per month these days, so you cannot go with a
provider where bandwidth is expensive or where you get less than
0.5TB/month.

In our case we have other co-located servers with another more expensive
provider and used to host the maptools.org stuff there too, but we ended
up moving just the maptools.org downloads and websites to iWeb because
bandwidth was much cheaper there... and we kept our more critical stuff
with the other provider.

You might want to consider a hybrid config like this as well.

Daniel
--
Daniel Morissette
http://www.mapgears.com/