[Mageia-sysadm] New hardware for mageia servers

[andre999]

Romain d'Alverny a écrit :
> On Sat, Oct 1, 2011 at 19:24, nicolas vigier<boklm at mars-attacks.org>  wrote:
>    
>>   Total: 2 261 euros
>>   So total is quite expensive.
>>      

That was my first reaction ...  But then I thought WAIT, this isn't a 
typical consumer or small business application ...

> Provided the role these hardware will play, this looks still rather
> cheap on the contrary. There may be alternatives but this doesn't look
> that expensive.
>    

Agreed.

>> An other solution could be to buy a cheap
>>   computer that one of us keep at home/office, doing remote backups.
>>      
> That's an option too, either way (with or without the above).
>    

We should have off-site backup, in case of a disaster at the centre.  At 
least for critical info.
If someone has to go to the centre, or we have to spend a lot of time 
downloading, at least we will have an up-to-date backup if it is remote.
I'd say that good quality disks and a UPS is important.
A cheap box that someone keeps at home/office seems workable, as long as 
there is a fast Internet connexion for restores.
Keeping occasional local backups at the centre, combined with up-to-date 
remote backups would be a good idea.
So normally in the case of failure, we rsync the local backup with the 
remote for quick recovery, but in the case of a disaster, we still have 
everything remote.
All that impacts on our hardware decisions.

...
>> - server for packagers, to host VMs used to test package builds. This
>>   needs to be a fast server, with a lot of RAM. Should we buy an
>>   expensive server for this now ? Or wait until we have more money, or
>>   someone donate a server for this ? Or rent a server at 60 euros /
>>   month on online.net ?
>>   http://www.online.net/serveur-dedie/offre-dedibox-pro-r210.xhtml
>>      

My bias is that buying is better than renting, if we can.
(In a year or two the rental would have paid the cost of buying.)

>> Any comments about this ?
>>      
> We should not wait but do with what we have, and tell about it, and
> remind regularly where we are in our budget (what's missing, what's
> needed, etc.) and how we can grow it. Once the ball is rolling, it's
> easier to find people willing to help it roll even further.
>    

Good point.

> Cheers,
>
> Romain
>    

My 2 cents :)

-- 
André