[Rack] possibility of tenants in the new rack

[jim]

    great questions. my responses, if not answers, are 
interspersed below. 


On Sat, 2011-03-05 at 13:15 -0800, Rubin Abdi wrote:
> When Andy and I setup pony for the first time, Andy made a lot of noise
> about how he wished for Noisebridge not to turn into a place that hosts
> servers. At that point all I cared about was getting drunk and
> installing Linux onto something new.
> 
> At this point I've become generally opposed to the idea of bringing in
> more dedicated servers into the space, creating a situation for stake
> holders to take ownership, liability, maintenance, etc. Basically more
> noise (materially and meta) in the space. The ops@ alias was a good
> example on how all that went very wrong.
> 
> But, at the same time man it would be fun to rev up a U1 for the first
> time and call it my own.
> 
> My questions at this point would be...
> 
> * Worth while: Would it be just as cheap to rent a rack somewhere else
> near by and then get a 1 - 2 hop link there from Noisebridge? 
JS: i suspect in terms of dollars per 1U space that my 
suggestion over the long term would be the cheapest for 
the tenants. "the long term" means a period of time long 
enough to amortize the installation cost of a high speed 
connection. 

> * Grand Poobah: Who's going to own deal with all this crap and who's
> going to watch the watcher? 
JS: no grand poobahs need apply. no need to watch watchers. 
effectively, think of this proposal as renting about half 
the rack to some entity that will, prior to occupying it, 
install a high speed connection, install electricity, and 
do work to make sure the rack is sufficiently quiet and out 
of the way so's not to bother people as much as does the 
stuff currently in Susan the Rack. The entity will install 
machines and there'll be no need for worries, trust me on 
this for now just to allow discussion. 

> * Money: Who's going to deal with this and how is would
> collecting/spending work with the space, would we go through consensus? 
JS: i, jim, will deal and collect and ensure that there's 
at least one, hopefully two, other personages that can 
take over in the event that i get hit by the beer truck. 

> * Noise level: How can we make Noisebridge not a noisier space with this
> rack? 
JS: per above: trust me on this point for now, just to allow 
discussion on other fronts. essentially the rack has to be 
enclosed in some way as to allow air flow and yet minimize 
sound. 

> * Security: As much as you'd like to say "determine some means for
> protecting the tenant computers from in-the-space hacking", as we've
> learned in the past Noisebridge offers no security in the space for
> personal items, nor can things really remain as personal items if you
> leave them untended in the space. How would you go about creating
> security when security really cannot exist? 
JS: not a problem at all (see Grand Poobah). the tenants would 
ensure that their computers are secure from reasonable 
disturbance, and given some unreasonable disturbance, well, the 
tenants would have to eat <BADWORD> and like it. 
> 
> Saying all that, I'd also be fairly happy if all the dedicated servers
> in the space moved to a local colo and the only gear we kept at
> Noisebridge was simply networking hardware and some dummy embedded
> machines to run the jukebox and touch screens, music and content can
> come from the colo. 
JS: so far, i have not not found a colo that offers the access 
and potentially low price that seems possible for my proposal. 
What this means to noisebridge is a little bit of extra income. 

> I do understand the benefits of keeping machines in
> the space for educational use and sand-boxing, and I'd have fun leaving
> a Shuttle machine with a 2TB drive sitting on my shelf running for my
> own gags and what not, 
JS: i have a mini-rack with a couple of sandbox hosts in the 
turing classroom. we sometimes turn them on during tuesday or 
friday afternoons. 

> but I don't think Noisebridge should jump into
> the hardware hosting business. 
JS: no one is asking noisebridge to jump into the hardware 
hosting business. the proposal is that noisebridge rents 
out a bit of space to a black box, in essence, that pays 
disproportionately high rates for square footage and for 
electrical power. 

JS: in addition to getting a bit of income, it's possible 
that noisebridge might be able to use some of the 
bandwidth, depending on the costs and nature of the high 
speed connection. no telling without getting specifics 
(DSL, multiple DSLs, T-1, T-10, fibre...?). 
> 
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