[Babase] Hosting v.s. buying

Karl O. Pinc babase@www.eco.princeton.edu
Mon, 31 Jan 2005 20:30:22 +0000


On 01/31/2005 01:31:19 PM, Susan Alberts wrote:
> 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.

I imagine that they are reluctant because they would be called in
to pick up the pieces should I get hit by a beer truck.  Aside from
that they'd be pretty much out of the picture were babase to
pay the hosting company directly.  Otherwise I image that Hunter would
be the guy with root access and he would grant access to everybody
else, just like he does now with albertslab.biology.duke.edu.  The
big differences for Hunter would be that he would not be responsible
for fixing hardware problems or restoring the box if it breaks,
but he would be responsible for maintaining a separate set of
usernames unless he can figure out some way to
hook into Duke's usernames.

There's also Hunter's marvelous daily backup system, but I think we can
forgo that as I plan for a permanent change log in a revision
control system.  (Database too.)

I don't think it makes sense to go to a hosted hardware server, just
a hosted software server.  Until we're running 'live' we won't know
just how much oomph we need and the software servers are right around
what I estimate we'll need.  Whereas Hunter's box is much more than
we'll need but would be great to have to run the conversion
and the conversion tests.  It'd be nice to be able to use Hunter's
spec-ed out box and then sell it back to Duke if we don't want it
later, which is kind of what we'd be doing if we hosted a
hardware server for a while and then abandoned it.  But the
hosted hardware servers don't have as much oomph as "Hunter's box"
either.

I think the thing to do is go with what Duke recommends.  They are
your "safety belt".

Karl <kop@meme.com>
Free Software:  "You don't pay back, you pay forward."
                 -- Robert A. Heinlein