[Rack] possibility of tenants in the new rack

jim jim at well.com
Sun Mar 6 07:02:16 UTC 2011


bottom posting.... 


On Sat, 2011-03-05 at 22:46 -0800, Dr. Jesus wrote:
> On Sat, Mar 5, 2011 at 4:23 PM, Jonathan Lassoff <jof at thejof.com> wrote:
> > On Sat, Mar 5, 2011 at 11:28 AM, jim <jim at systemateka.com> wrote:
> >>
> >>    i'm writing to the rack list to see if there's real
> >> interest or objections or contributions to the idea of
> >> setting up the new rack and getting some tenant computers
> >> in it.
> >
> > I kind of agree with Rubin and Andy on this topic. I think it's not a
> > good idea to offer this as a service inside of 2169, however I think
> > it would be a most *excellent* idea to form a purchasing collective
> > for some colocation space and bandwidth in a facility that's geared
> > towards offering that.
> >
> > On your point about having a place for people to practice: I think
> > this would be a most excellent use of space and power, provided that
> > the use of the equipment is temporary and transient while people are
> > using it. If a learner/student is interesting in setting up an entire
> > system or stack of hosts, the Noisecloud resource that Dr. J has would
> > be a much better place to test those things out.
> > By learning the basics of what systems need to be setup and applying
> > that knowledge through a provisioning script or configuration
> > management tool, it should be possible to spin up an entire stack of
> > hosts in a modest amount of time.
> >
> > Rubin summed up a lot of what I think are the salient points, however
> > I'd also like to proffer that we'd get incredibly shafty prices on
> > electrical power and bandwidth as compared to a proper colocation
> > facility.
> >
> >
> > Along these same lines though, I've been wanting to get a proper
> > colocated 1U host setup for some time now. I'd be happy to help
> > administer, coordinate, and organize a cooperative to go in on a group
> > purchase of some space, power, and bandwidth.
> > Jim, Rubin -- It sounded like you were both interested in getting
> > something personal set up. Know anyone else? What kind of space could
> > we be looking for? Quarter rack? Half rack?
> 
> A couple things:
> 
> 2111 Mission has webpass already and I'm trying to broker a deal where
> we would be able to rent 8 sqft in their facilities shop to install a
> rack in.  I'm not making any guarantees but so far there don't seem to
> be any showstoppers.
> 
> I'm already colocating hardware in the market on the first floor.
> There's a limited amount of space available to colocate more stuff as
> long as it's a very small amount of power, like a pogoplug or a geode
> board.  There's a dedicated business DSL circuit for that hardware,
> but we can run a riser to our network if we need to.
> 
> Noisecloud doesn't help people learn PC hardware voodoo.  You need
> physical access to PC hardware to practice voodoo on.  That's what
> Jim's going for here.
> 
> If someone wants physical access to a server lab, Ace Monster Toys has
> a very nice lab with something like a dozen proliants, a stack of 14
> 1U supermicro machines, gig switches, and a bunch of other stuff I'm
> probably forgetting.  They all netboot except for one machine with a
> nice SCSI array in it that's being used as the storage server.  I
> stuck one of the supermicro boxes in the closet next to the rack at
> 2169, in case someone wants to see what the supermicro machines are
> like.
> 
> Noisecloud does have three hosts which are used as controllers for
> speaking management protocols to all the other chassis at each site.
> We can host a few things on those machines since they have to be up
> anyway, but we have to be really careful to avoid doing anything
> that's going to cost the service donors a bunch of money.  Transit to
> some ASes at one site is unusually expensive for some reason I don't
> understand, and I'm personally responsible for making sure all
> operations comply with certain rules required by the tax-exempt nature
> of the operation.
> 
> I'm also sitting on a DL585 I'd like to use as a virtualization host,
> but it's not cheap to run.  I might have a site that will host it, but
> I need to spend something like $400 on wireless hardware to beef up
> the link to the site since it's a boat.
> 
> I do have 10 cobalt machines which are really cheap to run.  The MIPS
> ones are something like 14 watts and the x86 ones are something like
> 20.

JS: it seems there's some significant drift among 
some of us and our various extended circles toward 
getting a rack somewhere that we can share. i'm 
for it, in general. 
    i really like the idea that it's at noisebridge 
so i can just waddle from whatever i'm doing in the 
space to the rack, if need be. 
    it's not so bad if a shared rack is nearby, say 
downstairs or a block away. not as good, but not so 
bad. 
    i could get prices from the likes of telx and 
quest and other such in SF, but i'd rather work on 
getting something more homebrew and very local. 





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