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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