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Wed, 05 Nov 2014

A new Perl 6 community server - call for funding


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So far, many Perl 6 developers have used feather as a generic development server. Juerd, who has genereously provided this server for us for free for many years, has announced that it will be shut down at the end of the year.

My daytime job is at a b2b IT outsourcing and hosting company called noris network, and they have agreed to sponsor the hosting/housing of a 1U 19" server in one of their state-of-the-art data centers in Nürnberg, Germany.

What's missing is the actual hardware. Some folks in the community have already agreed to participate in funding the hardware, though I have few concrete pledges.

So here is the call to action: If you want to help the Perl 6 community with a one-time donation towards a new community server, please send me an e-mail to moritz at faui2k3 dot org, specifying the amount you're willing do pledge, and whether you want to stay private as a donor. I accept money transfer by paypal and wire transfer (SWIFT). Direct hardware donations are also welcome. (Though actual money will be deferred until the final decision what hardware to buy, and thus the total amount required).

How much do we need?

Decent, used 1U servers seem to start at about 250€, though 350€ would get us a lot more bang (mostly RAM and hard disk space). And in general, the more the merrier. (Cheaper offers exist, for example on ebay, but usually they are without hard disks, so the need for extra drives makes them more expensive in total).

With more money, even beefier hardware and/or spare parts and/or a maintainance contract and/new hardware would be an option.

What do we need it for?

The main tasks for the server are:

  • Hosting websites like perl6.org and the synopses
  • Hosting infrastructure like the panda metadata server
  • Be available for smoke runs of the compilers, star distributions and module ecosystem.
  • Be available as a general development machine for people who don't have linux available and/or not enough resources to build some Perl 6 compilers on their own machines comfortably.
  • A place for IRC sessions for community memebers
  • A backup location for community services like the IRC logs, the camelia IRC eval bot etc. Those resources are currently hosted elswewhere, though having another option for hosting would be very valuable.
  • A webspace for people who want to host Perl 6-related material.
  • It is explicitly not meant as a general hosting platform, nor as a mail server.

    Configuration

    If the hardware we get is beefy enough, I'd like to virtualize the server into two to three components. One for hosting the perl6.org and related websites that should be rather stable, and one for the rest of the system. If resources allow it, and depending on feedback I get, maybe a third virtual system for high-risk stuff like evalbot.

    As operating system I'll install Debian Jessie (the current testing), simply because I'll end up maintaing the system, and it's the system I'm most familiar with.

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