[Linux-aus] possible grant request for training server

[Russell Coker]

NB  This is not an actual grant request.  This is a discussion prior to 
determining what grant to request.  It could be that LA members offer what is 
needed without the need for an LA grant request.

http://tinyurl.com/pkqpgyx

The German hosting company Hetzner offers a range of very affordable servers at 
low prices, the above URL has links for some of their best value for money 
offerings which includes E39 ($57.70 according to xe.com) per month for a 
system with 64G of RAM and 2TB of RAID-1 storage (250G of SSD isn't enough and 
500G of SSD makes it too expensive).  For some years my blog has been hosted 
on a VM on such a Hetzner server and the LUV server is on another VM on the 
same system.  So Hetzner has been working well.

In the past LUV has run a number of training sessions about system 
administration.  This has included setting up DNS, mail servers, Cassandra, 
BTRFS, and ZFS.  Those sessions have been well received.

I am sure that other LUGs in Australia could run similar hands on training 
sessions.  I don't think that the grant required would be justified for just 
LUV use, but I anticipate that other LUGs in Australia will make use of it - 
if only to go through the course work that I and others have prepared for LUV.  
But I really hope that other LUGs will develop course work too.

If we had a spare server for running VMs, I would be happy to run the Dom0 and 
set things up to allow people from various LUGs to grant access to VMs to 
their members for training sessions at meetings and also for online training 
over IRC or other IM systems.

Another possibility instead of Hetzner is that I have an offer of free hosting 
in Melbourne with a reasonable number of IPv4 addresses (maybe dozens of 
addresses as opposed to Hetzner offering few addresses and making you pay extra 
for them).  But that free hosting requires a system that's not too noisey (I 
was told to remove a previous system LUV had for this purpose because of the 
noise).  If someone has a spare system with 32G+ of RAM and isn't noisey (IE 
not rack mount) then that would be an option.

http://www.dell.com/au/business/p/poweredge-t30/pd

A Dell PowerEdge T30 can take up to 64G of RAM and starts at $1,087 (maybe 
less with RACV discount).  I'm not sure how much it costs to expand it to 64G, 
the Dell web site isn't helpful in this regard.  I am not set on Dell, it's 
just a really easy way of getting a price to start the discussion.  As an 
aside buying a Dell will be cheaper than renting at Hetzner for 2 years.

If an LA member has a tower server that's they don't need which can take a 
suitable amount of RAM then that would be great, CPU power is not a 
requirement, just RAM and storage.  If such a server isn't in Victoria then 
I'll apply for an LA grant for courier fees.

Please offer any suggestions about cheaper ways of achieving these goals.

If you want to start a more general discussion about servers for running Linux 
then please change the subject.

-- 
My Main Blog         http://etbe.coker.com.au/
My Documents Blog    http://doc.coker.com.au/