When you look at everything that goes into the TCO, it is hard to make
a case for a physical server.

We have about 17 years experience running systems starting with the
California State Library's DEC Alpha. We won't miss running the
datacenter on the weekend to deal with a drive failure.

Amazon has gone from a metric-less, expensive and difficult to manage
system to a solid infrastructure with better performance per dollar
than we can get in our datacenter. The bonus is thatt we can scale at
will.

Cary

On Mon, Jul 16, 2012 at 6:18 PM, Nate Hill <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> I should have anticipated a lot of folks would be pushing AWS or Rackspace
> or something off-site.
>
> At my last job in San Jose I would have *loved* to have outsourced all of
> this because of the complications working with both city and University IT
> and network.
> I would have loved to have kissed those Windows servers goodbye and brushed
> up on my Linux and had the 24 hour support and zero downtime guarantee that
> came with such a solution.
>
> In Chattanooga, the situation is different.
>
> We've got the 1 gig connection, and it is a big piece of this wonderful
> city's identity.  I definitely don't know enough about network architecture
> to speak meaningfully about it, but we are moving from an antiquated setup
> to the fastest public internet in the country.  It's pretty cool.  I don't
> think outsourcing is really part of that plan, you know?  I'm really
> looking forward to engaging the local geek community in creating local
> solutions.
>
> I do imagine that in the future as we do one-off apps we'll experiment with
> AWS.  For now, I'm awfully excited to set up some hardware, have control of
> that hardware (that cannot be taken for granted in public libraries) and do
> some tinkering.
>
> Yes... I do need more than just a production server, but I've got some
> reconditioned boxes coming from the city that I can play with for testing
> and staging (for now).
>
> For now, this server is going to run/host a Drupal website for the library.
>
> Please, anybody, do speak up if you think my approach is flawed...
>
> N
>
> On Mon, Jul 16, 2012 at 8:43 PM, Ross Singer <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>> This answer segues well into my question: why, exactly, do you want a
>> physical server?
>>
>> I realize that there are plenty arguments for running your own hardware
>> (and bandwidth is cheap and plentiful in Chattanooga -- which deals with
>> the main carrying cost), but, presumably you'll need more than one (for
>> replication and whatnot), right?
>>
>> What exactly do you plan to run/host on this server?
>>
>> -Ross.
>>
>> On Monday, July 16, 2012, Cary Gordon wrote:
>>
>> > We currently use Dell in our datacenter, but we are moving almost all
>> > of our servers to AWS over the next 10 months.
>> >
>> > Thanks,
>> >
>> > Cary
>> >
>> > On Mon, Jul 16, 2012 at 11:52 AM, Nate Hill <[log in to unmask]
>> <javascript:;>>
>> > wrote:
>> > > I'm shopping for a new dedicated server for our public library website.
>> > > I'd like to run Ubuntu.
>> > > Does anyone have any hardware suggestions/guidance they'd like to
>> offer?
>> > > I'd like to not spend a zillion dollars.
>> > > Thanks-
>> > >
>> > > --
>> > > Nate Hill
>> > > [log in to unmask] <javascript:;>
>> > > http://www.natehill.net
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > --
>> > Cary Gordon
>> > The Cherry Hill Company
>> > http://chillco.com
>> >
>>
>
>
>
> --
> Nate Hill
> [log in to unmask]
> http://www.natehill.net



-- 
Cary Gordon
The Cherry Hill Company
http://chillco.com