[NCUC E-team] [NCUC Finance] Hosting the NCUC E-Platform

[Wilson Abigaba]

Team,

Below is the feedback I have gotten from finance team so far. Points
are randomly listed.
- We need to create a platform that is not technically demanding  and
time consuming so that it can be easily maintained beyond the current
team.
- We need to add more detail about specific requirements and costs
- I think we need to justify why we should drop ning and adopt a VPS
- Proposal should be sent to (and approved by) the EC
- We might also need to formally consider (at least 3, as per the
standard procurement procedures) other vendors so that we justify why
Gandi was chosen.

I am stepping out for a few hours but here is our current proposal. I
think we can edit it concurrently and send it to EC by end of today.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1NxYgmqlhoBX9BQJOIcZ6EVsbctzn3WZHMGDty63xLxs/edit

Reading Tapani's response below, I personally wouldn't recommend
anything significantly below the suggested $400 as I think it's
already at 'minimum requirement' considering what we want to do :)

Kind Regards,
Wilson

On Thu, Feb 21, 2013 at 7:48 AM, Tapani Tarvainen
<ncuc at tapani.tarvainen.info> wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 20, 2013 at 11:01:06PM +0100, William Drake (william.drake at uzh.ch) wrote:
>
>> On Feb 20, 2013, at 22:22, Milton L Mueller <mueller at syr.edu> wrote:
>
>> > One must be careful of ongoing expenditures, especially if they
>> > lock us in to anything that would be costly to get out of, but
>> > $400/year is certainly not out of reach.
>
>> > It does seem a bit high (without knowing the requirements) as the
>> > current Ning site is $235/year but if VPS does something that
>> > normal hosting doesn't, I am sure you can convince EC to approve
>> > it.
>
>> Wilson and Tapani, were there other vendors/options? Agree with MM a
>> little more detail/background wouldn't I hurt for an ongoing
>> expenditure, even if it's less for a decade than we spend at a time
>> on other stuff.
>
> We did not do a formal comparison of vendors, it was felt
> unnecessary due to the relatively small amount involved and
> the fact that we already are using Gandi for DNS registration
> so using it for hosting as well avoids extra work in account
> management. But we did discuss the features we wanted
> (listed in Wilson's document) and we're well enough aware of
> the market situation to know Gandi is cheap for what they offer.
>
> We could cut down on the $400 figure, however, by settling on a less
> powerful VPS. The smallest available VPS at Gandi would be about
> $170/year or $16/month (or $0.53/day!), and if you want to keep
> tighter rein on the expenditure we could start with that.
> It would probably to run out of power pretty soon though if we get
> around to doing all we've been planning to, but it would be enough to
> get us started and buying more oomph in small chunks only as needed
> is of course possible, even down to daily basis if desired.
> The downside there would be the extra time required to manage it
> and to process and approve the bills piecemeal.
> So I guess it boils down to how much people's time is worth, how
> small amounts merit a separate decision in the EC, how much time
> the sysadmins need to spend to monitor the machine and adjust
> it as needed, &c.
>
> One possibly money-saving alternative would be for the EC to authorize
> expenditure of up to a certain amount, like that $400, but
> recommending that it be used cautiously, buying more power bit by bit
> as the need arises. That way it would only use up e-team's and
> Milton's time rather than EC's and could be done faster.
> That's actually a good reason for having some pre-approved
> budget not spent at once, we might have an unexpected peak
> in bandwitdh or something we'd like to react to fast
> (maybe some outreach effort explodes our popularity and
> we get a billion people hitting our site at once...)
>
> But, since we're just starting to work out new processes here,
> I would be OK with going slowly: as I said that $170 would be
> enough to get us started, just don't be surprised when the
> e-team asks for more later.
>
> --
> Tapani Tarvainen
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