K.G. Schneider wrote:
> I wonder if code4lib couldn't be just as happy holding an annual
> virtualbake sale or raffle and buying space at Hurricane Electric or
> something. Just a thought. What are we talking about in terms of needs?
>
It's not paying for server colocation and bandwidth and electricity that
is the problem. It's not the 'hard' costs like this. We were already
getting those donated. At small financial burden to the donators (edsu,
rsinger, eby, and other anvil owners), and they were happy to continue
making this donation so far as I know.

The problem is sysadmin staffing. We do not have anyone who wants to
volunteer a professional level of sysadmining (backups, patches,
security, etc.).  And that led to a situation that, as Dan Chudnov
explained, all of us feel is currently unacceptable. Because we have
services running that we want to be stable, requiring a professional
level of sysadmining.

OSU has offered to donate this to us. We also want to maintain control
of certain technical things (such as DNS for code4lib.org, and we need
command line access, and would optimally have a few people have root).

If there's a way to get quality professional sysadmining at market rates
(rather than donated), at 'bake sale/raffle' levels of cost, then I
don't know about it (but I don't know much about the market for
colocation/sysadmining).

If there are other entities offering to provide this, they are worth
considering too. But none of them are going to be perfect, and they are
all going to have some risks of us wanting to change hosts again in the
future. We want to minimize that by choosing wisely, because changing
hosts is a pain. Regardless of host chosen, we also want to make sure we
can set things up to _lessen_ the pain of changing hosts, because like
Karen says all things come to an end eventually. But there will be some
risk of things not working out down the line no matter what.  Nothings
perfect, that's how it goes.

Jonathan