Donated hosting and dedicated box from networkredux

[Ethan Blanton]

Kevin Stange spake unto us the following wisdom:
> Evan Schoenberg wrote:
> >Thomas Brenneke of NetworkRedux, which provides Adium's hosting - both  
> >a dedicated box they provided and co-lo for a second machine we  
> >provided - has offerred to provide both hardware (a dedicated machine)  
> >and hosting for free to Pidgin.
> 
> Not to start a "bidding war" here, but I should note that I talked it 
> over with my boss at Steadfast Networks and we are also prepared to 
> provide a dedicated server for free, depending on bandwidth 
> arrangements, with the single requirement of a button indicating our 
> hosting services are used at the bottom of the site (similar to what we 
> already do for DV LABS).

I don't have a problem with us adding a second machine, or replacing
homing, but just to be clear ...

As I pointed out yesterday (or the day before?) on devel at cpi, in each
of the previous meltdowns to this ICQ meltdown, it has turned out that
there was a serious configuration and/or content problem which was
chewing up the machine.  Had we had a bigger or better machine, it
would have simply chewed harder and still melted down.  Now, I don't
know about this ICQ situation, maybe it was a simple overload.  If it
was, the answer is *still* probably to streamline the services, and
throwing more power at it will be (of course -- it always is) stopgap.

We can get a new machine, that's fine; however, I think we need to
look hard at the costs of maintaining two (or switching over, if
that's what we want to do) in light of the fact that it almost
certainly won't *fix* any problems.  It may or may not push them back.

Note that I think one real benefit would be to move the monotone
repository (Gary has also offered this in the past); we have a lot of
problems with syncing from the distribution database to the databases
for the various local services.  This is also a problem which is only
worked around by distributing, but the workaround is effective and
quantifiable -- those databases are huge, and (I think) we spend a lot
of time with I/O contention between the various databases.  As to
where it goes, I am ambivalent.

Ethan

-- 
The laws that forbid the carrying of arms are laws [that have no remedy
for evils].  They disarm only those who are neither inclined nor
determined to commit crimes.
		-- Cesare Beccaria, "On Crimes and Punishments", 1764
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