It might be worthwhile having a conversation to get a feel for what they're
equipped to support and what the cost structure will look like for the
library. Sometimes, resources that are easy and cheap to provision on the
open market can be difficult and (very) expensive to obtain locally. Also
find out what support looks like, what kind of disaster recovery options
are available, what policies they have regarding connections/services, etc.

As this is a dev environment, specific things you might want to ask about
include imaging machines and rebuilding. When doing these things is easy,
you can develop very aggressively. Whenever something works, take a new
image you can work from in future. Whenever something blows up, dump the
server and reconstitute from your latest good image. It's much easier to
work if you don't have to worry about messing things up.

kyle




On Tue, Aug 7, 2018 at 12:08 PM Cary Gordon <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> Ideally, they should give you a mini-monster server so you could spin up
> your own VMs or run Docker. Actually, Docker would be a great way to go. I
> would want at least 8 GB RAM and 4 cores, although I would ask for at least
> double that.
>
> Of course, in my world, I would just spin up nano and micro instances on
> AWS as I needed them. I run scripts to turn them off when they are not
> being used. If you need to test on bigger hardware, use spot instances.
>
> If hardware is free for you, then you'll be sticking to it, I presume.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Cary
>
> On Thu, Aug 2, 2018 at 1:56 PM, Julie Cole <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> > Good point, although in a VM environment it is likely outside our
> control,
> > and might be hard to justify an exception for a sandbox server.
> > Julie
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Code for Libraries <[log in to unmask]> On Behalf Of Edward
> > Almasy
> > Sent: Thursday, August 2, 2018 1:19 PM
> > To: [log in to unmask]
> > Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Web Server Specs?
> >
> > On Aug 2, 2018, at 2:27 PM, Julie Cole <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> > > We plan to install a LAPP or LAMP stack on it.  (maybe both databases?)
> > I don't see this as being a very heavy transaction oriented environment.
> > Some thoughts of things we would like to do with it:
> > > This will likely be a virtual server, so it won't be written in stone,
> > but I'm still unclear on how much to ask for in terms of CPU, Memory and
> > RAM.
> > > Any tips, pointers, gotchas?
> >
> > If possible, get an SSD for storage.  In addition to the obvious
> increased
> > general responsiveness, it’ll make many development and maintenance tasks
> > far less onerous.
> >
> > Ed
> >
> >
> > --
> > Edward Almasy <[log in to unmask]>
> > Director  •  Internet Scout Research Group Computer Sciences Dept  •  U
> of
> > Wisconsin - Madison
> > 1210 W Dayton St  •  Madison WI 53706  •  3HCV+J6
> > 608-262-6606 (voice)  •  608-265-9296 (fax)
> >
> >
>
>
> --
> Cary Gordon
> The Cherry Hill Company
> http://chillco.com
>