[Babase] Hosting v.s. buying

Susan Alberts babase@www.eco.princeton.edu
Mon, 31 Jan 2005 14:31:19 -0500


Thanks for the info on hosting vs buying (Susan and Hunter, see info 
below). I didn't get a chance to talk to Hunter about this yet but 
did talk to Susan Gerbeth Jones, head of computer team here. Here are 
some thoughts.

First, there is no model here in Bio for how this would work, and for 
this reason the computer team is somewhat reluctant to go this route 
at the moment.

Second, the cost for hosting the dedicated hardware server is high if 
we need it for an extended length of time. For instance if we kept it 
three years, we are at the cost of buying.

once we could move to the dedicated software server then the cost 
drops dramatically. However, again the lack of a good model here in 
the department for how this would work probably makes the computer 
team reluctant.

In my conversation with Susan G-J today, we discussed that it might 
be good, for our first server, to buy it. We can reassess after 3 
years when the end of the server's life is approaching and hosting is 
more developed and more familiar here.

Hunter, input? Anyone else, thoughts?

Susan

>Hi,
>
>I've looked into it a bit, and forgot to mention
>what I found in our last phone call.
>
>Before we'd go live we'd need a dedicated hardware server.
>These are $136/month.
>http://www.rimuhosting.com/order/startorder.jsp#karaka
>We might want to pay a bit more to get more RAM.
>
>The conversion just puts too much of a beating on the
>computer to be able to have anybody sharing with us.
>
>However, once we go live I'm sure we can get away
>with a dedicated server that's pure software.
>(Virtualization, it's the new hot thing.  IBM is
>making lots of bucks on virtualization these days.)
>We get the total control of having our own box
>but the lower cost of sharing the underlying hardware.
>(Too bad Hunter's not doing this.  It'd be the
>perfect solution for us.  Susan, could you
>mention "user mode Linux" to Hunter and see if
>he just happens to jump up and down with desire
>to do this?)
>
>For our own software server, we'd pay between $40
>and $65/month.
>http://www.rimuhosting.com/order/startorder.jsp#tawa
>
>The committments are month-by-month, unless you want
>to pay for a year in which case you get one month
>free.
>
>It will be nice to have (even the lesser) of Hunter's
>spec-ed out boxes to run the conversion.  After that
>I think it'd be quite a lot more than we need.
>I do have plans for recording all the changes ever
>made to the data in the database, but that will run at night
>and we don't really care if it takes hours.
>
>Decisions, decisions.
>
>How does Hunter feel about out-sourceing the hosting?
>
>Karl <kop@meme.com>
>Free Software:  "You don't pay back, you pay forward."
>                 -- Robert A. Heinlein
>
>
>
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-- 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Susan Alberts, Associate Professor 
Department of Biology, Duke University, Box 90338, Durham NC 27708 
phone 919-660-7272  fax 919-660-7293