Replying to myself ...
1. I think we can migrate to cheaper hosts incrementally, I suggest moving the
database first and access it from the current app servers, and then move those next.
2. I think that specifically we should use https://postgres.heroku.com/ as the
cloud to host the database specifically, which would be quality managed by
experts, and put our web application and other stuff somewhere else. I don't
know what our traffic is, but I suspect their $50/month cheapest
production-level plan should do the job. They also have a $9/month developer
plan which might alternately meet our needs but probably carries more risk and
has no RAM cache while the $50 one has cache. Either way, that's significantly
cheaper than the $100+ we currently pay for one of our 3 existing servers
dedicated to the database, which can be shutdown after migration. I think the
only thing we lose is having higher database access latencies, but if our
traffic is low I don't think that'll be a problem.
3. With the database on Heroku, everything else should require fewer servers,
and perhaps Amazon cloud for those will suffice.
4. I am willing to make a relatively large one-time donation specifically for
paying our resident technical expert(s), the ones who setup or maintained
Citizendium already, to migrate Citizendium to new servers, in addition to the
flat $10/month I've donated for maintenance continuously since Citizendium
launched. I would pay this directly to said technical person. Actual amount
and details I can discuss with them. Also, at least for the database migration,
once that's done it should reduce further maintenance work in theory.
5. With appropriate choices I believe we can move Citizendium to significantly
cheaper hosting without loss of functionality. And we shouldn't have to pay
more than about $100/month given Citizendium's current useage level.
-- Darren Duncan
On 2013.02.01 12:01 AM, Darren Duncan wrote:
I think part of the issue was that the migration to some other servers would
take some effort and no one had both the skills and inclination to spend that
time. And also the alternate servers had to be found. Maybe the cloud is the
answer for the latter question, but the actual migration will still take some
effort, probably a few days' worth or more, and need someone willing to take
that time to do it. My suggestion is to offer to pay something to the person
who already had setup/maintained the servers already and would be the best
qualified to do the move. Unless there's something in the charter against
paying this, probably that expense would pay for itself in the server savings,
especially if site traffic is low and the cloud fee is largely by the useage.
But if using Amazon, make sure to use the separate elastic storage or whatever
its called to keep the database on, because the state of the regular virtual
servers themselves can easily be lost and reset. -- Darren Duncan
On 2013.01.31 11:12 AM, Larry Sanger wrote:
Hayford, and all,
The way I see it, if we can find a technical volunteer who wants to get his or
her hands dirty with things like finding the cheapest reliable hosting, and
moving things, that person can simply simply present us with a technical plan.
Then we say yes or no to the plan. As long as services are uninterrupted, and
the price is much less (I agree--it's just obvious that $320 is no longer
necessary to pay, for the services we really /need/) who will argue?
--Larry
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