Re: [pgsql-advocacy] Server unreliability

On Wed, 29 Sep 2004, Josh Berkus wrote:

> I agree that when we have more servers dedicated to PostgreSQL, we
> should use a different approach than the jails. Marc, what are the
> advantages of the jails on a dedicated server, since we are so familiar
> with their drawbacks?

'k, just to re-emphasize ... the jails are not, and have never been, the
problem ... when I can put a dedicated server in, though, the thing that
will fix the problem is getting rid of the unionfs that we're using to
converse disk space ...

as to what advantages the jail's provide ... mainly, security ... we can
easily provide root access to pugs.postgresql.org, as an example, so that
Fred (please tell me I remembered right?) can do whatever work he wants,
without giving him full root on the developer jail ... same with all of
the other jails ... Chris has full root on gborg, so that he doesn't have
to ask someone else to do something when he notices a problem (ie. restart
mailman) ...

The other advantage ... seperate process space ... so, as an example, if
someone wanted to run a different server then apache on port 80, they
could ...

> But being solved. The archives have been copied to CommandPrompt, and
> the various archive search tools have been distributed. Once we can
> change the web interface, there should always be one tool and/or version
> available regardless of individual server/hosting failures.

Joshua and I should have this switched over by end of day today ... I just
did a bunch of "clean ups" to fix some of the issues with the search form,
but to also balance things out a bit more ... also removed the right
banner ad, so that page loading is a bit faster ... and I think we have
the 'Last-modified' stuff finally working properly ...

> The big obstacle in moving anything is bandwidth. While any number of
> companies will offer to host stuff for us, we can't match the amount of
> bandwidth we're currently using in Panama -- and hosting donors won't support
> anywhere near that level (which runs to scores of GB per month). So while we
> can move individual, less-crucial components

And this is somethign that we have been working on over the past several
months ... search has moved to John's location/servers, archives has done
one move so far, and is going to be moving to CPs location, etc ...

And, now that we have, at least, an option for the hot failover, those VMs
that it is safe to do it with, we can get that going so that downtime of
one server isn't near as critical as it once was ...

----
Marc G. Fournier Hub.Org Networking Services (http://www.hub.org)
Email: scrappy(at)hub(dot)org Yahoo!: yscrappy ICQ: 7615664