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Grex > Coop > #267: Feb 2010 Board Meeting Minutes | |
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| Author |
Message |
| 17 new of 66 responses total. |
slynne
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response 50 of 66:
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Feb 25 22:02 UTC 2010 |
FWIW, I think grex should take Tony up on his offer too. I doubt anyone
has any objections based on his character or anything like that.
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goose
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response 51 of 66:
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Feb 25 22:23 UTC 2010 |
This response has been erased.
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tonster
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response 52 of 66:
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Feb 26 02:06 UTC 2010 |
resp:49: feel free to ask any questions or show any concerns here. it's
not like anyone besides you, remmers, or cross is going to.
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nharmon
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response 53 of 66:
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Feb 26 03:31 UTC 2010 |
Do any of the ESX hosts run V-replicator?
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tonster
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response 54 of 66:
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Feb 26 04:08 UTC 2010 |
I'm rebuilding the host that grex would run on soon. I can put pretty
much any vmware on it at this point. I haven't decided which version
I'll put on though.
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tsty
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response 55 of 66:
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Feb 26 22:49 UTC 2010 |
i support (and supported) tonster for satff a whiel back ... it;s in tehere.
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tsty
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response 56 of 66:
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Feb 27 08:05 UTC 2010 |
re 48 ... simply because yo are not runing -nor directing- grex, that;s why
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remmers
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response 57 of 66:
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Feb 27 15:39 UTC 2010 |
My goodness, run Grex on a virtual machine? What an absurd idea;
why is anybody even considering it? ;-) (That's an in-joke; feel
free to ignore it.)
Okay, re resp:49, I have a few questions about how the virtual
hosting would work, how the resources would compare with what we
have now. Maybe some of them have already been answered somewhere,
but it'd be nice to get the info collected in one spot.
Disk space:
How much can we have?
Currently, Grex has a capacity of about 128G on wd0, roughly
26G of which is actually in use. That seems pretty modest and
easy to accommodate. I don't know how much was on the SCSI
disk that died, though. (By the way, the entire 19 years worth
of conferences uses less than 700M of space. Hey, I could fit
that on a corner of my laptop.)
Processor capacity:
Would multiple processor-intensive activities (like, various
users doing compiles at the same time) be handled gracefully?
Network connectivity:
What ISP would Grex be using? Cable, DSL, or something else?
How would speed and capacity compare with what we have currently?
Would users notice slowdowns in shell interaction, upload/download,
web page loads, etc? Would there be a cap on how much Grex
could use? Would Grex continue to have its own unique IP
address?
Operating system:
Can we run OpenBSD? That would certainly simplify the process
of moving stuff over from the current machine. Would it be
preferable to run something else, e.g. FreeBSD, in a VM
environment, though?
I'm fairly familiar with VMWare, by the way, and run it on both
Windows Vista and OS X machines. I know that it's perfectly
possible to install OpenBSD in a VMWare image, having done so
myself, but haven't played around with it enough to know if
there are any gotchas that might impact us.
Remote console:
Is there a virtual console that staff can access providing
facilities such as power on/off, shutdowns, and single user
mode? I have a small FreeBSD VM (XEN technology) hosted at
RootBSD (http://rootbsd.net) that uses a Java applet for
that purpose. Would you provide something similar?
Remote console access would be a huge plus for Grex.
Currently, console work requires physical access to the
hardware, which only happens when a local staff member is
available to visit our colo during their business hours.
I'd love to see that troublesome bottleneck removed.
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tonster
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response 58 of 66:
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Feb 27 16:54 UTC 2010 |
resp:57: I think I've adequately outlined my position on virtual
machines at commercial facilities in prior posts. I agree with you that
it can work very well, but I don't think any commercial company will be
able to offer what Grex needs to run well at a reasonable cost. I don't
know what you're paying to colo the box now, but I think you could only
get a fraction of the memory/disk/cpu at a vm hosting provider for the
same cost.
As far as what I can offer, I'm currently planning to install the new
box that Grex would go on with 2x500GB mirrored drives, so I would give
Grex a fraction of that space. I think it's not unreasonable to say
200GB would be no problem. If Grex actually wants more space, I could
reconsider and get different drives, but I already have this hardware.
The physical box is an HP server, has 2 CPU's, and 1GB of ram (though
I'm adding a lot more RAM once I finally get around to ordering it).
The box ultimately won't be dedicated to Grex, but the other VM's that
will be running or installed on it are not used often and only used in
testing configurations for work. I wouldn't anticipate them often
conflicting with grex in any way.
I've compiled multiple things at once and installed multiple
applications on multiple machines at the same time before (I use it to
test the zimbra mail software, which is a fairly intensive app at times,
so it's stress tested) and usually theres no real negative affect on the
other VM's.
My ISP is AT&T UVerse, so I've got pretty good bandwidth.
OpenBSD would depend on whether it could run on VMware, which as you've
said, I believe it can. I've offered before, and if anyone wants to
play around and test it, I'd be happy to assign the VM, give it some
space, and give some people access to install the OS and play. The
Virtual Console would be through VMware Infrastructure Client, although
if I install vSphere instead, it may be a slightly different client.
Either way, I can assign all rights to whoever wants/needs them so they
can do whatever is needed anytime they need to. The only real obvious
hurdle would be if I lost power or internet access, obviously the server
would go down.
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mary
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response 59 of 66:
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Feb 27 19:03 UTC 2010 |
Your ISP's terms and conditions of use would be okay with you hosting
Grex?
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richard
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response 60 of 66:
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Feb 27 19:41 UTC 2010 |
Still haven't found out what happened to the Grex Gavel. I mean how is
Grex to continue with board meetings when it has no gavel. I think
slynne must have let her dogs use the gavel as a chew toy :)
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tonster
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response 61 of 66:
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Feb 28 02:15 UTC 2010 |
I'm not aware of anything in the uverse terms and conditions that would
prevent me from hosting grex. additionally, I wouldn't be using at&t
IP's as I have my own tunneled IP addresses that I host my things on, so
it's unlikely they'd know anything about it, and any complaints or
anything would end up going to that ISP in the form of complaints or
anything, and that absolutely allows me to host whatever I want to.
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slynne
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response 62 of 66:
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Feb 28 20:51 UTC 2010 |
resp:60 It is in my desk drawer at work because I keep meaning to give
it back but then I keep forgetting.
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cross
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response 63 of 66:
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Mar 7 14:27 UTC 2010 |
See coop:248 for a recap of the discussion of running Grex under a virtual
hosting solution. To summarize, I see Tony's solution as sounding a lot more
like running Grex under a virtualization soltuion on our own hardware than
running Grex under a commercial virtual provider, which was my objection.
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remmers
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response 64 of 66:
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Mar 7 15:24 UTC 2010 |
Re resp:62 - I think this has been reported elsewhere, but the
Grex Gavel has been rescued from slynne's desk drawer and will
be transferred to the new president at tonight's board meeting.
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mary
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response 65 of 66:
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Mar 7 15:31 UTC 2010 |
Re: #63 And I see different potential problems running on a friend's
computer rather than on an commercial ISP with a contract for service.
But Tony's offer is generous and we should give it a try. All the while
keeping backups elsewhere.
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kentn
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response 66 of 66:
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Mar 7 16:30 UTC 2010 |
Given we don't have a lot of money coming in right now (something we
need to fix), solutions that reduce our cost of operation are attractive.
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