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

[Brenden Kuerbis]

Dear all,

I've taken the liberty of revising the VPS request based on your comments
and discussion on list(s).  Please take a quick peek, but I believe its
ready to ship off to the EC for approval.  Lets get moving on this so we
can setup the VPS, an instance of WordPress and migrate the email lists.

-- B

On Thu, Feb 21, 2013 at 2:46 AM, Wilson Abigaba <wilson at isoc.ug> wrote:

> 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
> > _______________________________________________
> > Finance mailing list
> > Finance at lists.ncuc.org
> > http://lists.ncuc.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/finance
> _______________________________________________
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>
>
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