Salve!
> I have a question about installation of Koha.
>
> Relative to hosting Koha in the cloud as opposed to on our own local
> servers on our domain (which I assume most people do), what is the thinking
> about the ease of installing and updating if it is hosted "externally"
> versus on our own servers?
>
As long as you have access to the command line and can update and change
things at will, then there is no difference between the cloud and a physical
local server. That latter bit seems to be a big problem with a lot of
companies, though. So choose a service provider with great care and after a lot
of testing. You not only needs be able to update Koha, but all of Koha's
dependencies as well.
>
> Are there any security issues I should be concerned about in either case?
>
The only difference I can spot might actually weigh as a positive in favour
of cloud based service. When you have a physical server and suffer a local
catastrophe, such as an earthquake, fire, sinkhole, et cetera, there goes your
data. If you found a cloud based service that allows you to maintain things
routinely, there shouldn't be any difference. You're trusting someone else when
you select a hosted service, but this would be the same trust you would put in
a normal vendor in most cases, anyway. If you hire a new employee for your
building and give them a set of keys, you're taking a security risk, too, but
in both cases that risk ought be calculated.
Security issues in general are shared over a specific listserv that's
populated by trusted Community members. Bugs on that list are fixed with
extreme prejudice.
My final note is to consider if you're going to actually *need* the data
that you collect and keep. A certain naughty Library that shall remain nameless
used to keep the Social Security Numbers of all of their Patrons in a note
field on a non Koha system that would literally pop up *every* time someone
checked out.
Cheers,
Brooke
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