Though it is not entirely fixed, here are some news of a hardware donation made to Wikimedia Foundation
-------------
An employee at HP in France has contacted us, offering us free hardware.
This is a no-strings-attached donation from a few friends at HP who want to support Wikipedia. They reserve the right to mention this donation.
The machines offered are:* One 4U 6 CPU Xeon 750 with 1GB of RAM* One 4 CPU Xeon 700 with 2GB of RAM* One 6U 8 CPU Xeon 900 with 16GB of RAM and 2 SCSI drive max (which might work as a web server box immediately)* 3 Celeron 600 1U with 20G/ide and 128M of memory.
There were a lot of discussion on irc these days about these servers and many people got involved to determine what would be best doing.
First we decided to accept the offer :-) The 6 servers will be picked up 2 french contributors, Med and Cereal Killer on thursday. There will be a small shipping cost from Grenoble (the city where the servers come from) to Paris, which will be taken by the WMF.
Med will install the Celerons. They will have a memory upgrade (the WMF will pay for this).
Yann has found us a hosting company ready to host the three squids for free, http://lost-oasis.fr/ :-)
The three bigger servers will be shipped from Paris to Florida. We are currently trying to find cheap shipping cost. Any help/suggestion for *cheap* shipping is most welcome. We'd prefer a company with good credentials, but there is no requirement in terms of shipping speed, so we might be able to find a good price. Please, help us if you know a good shipping solution.
-----------
I will set a page on the future wikimediafoundation website (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WMF/Main Page) to begin listing corporations helping Wikimedia projects.
--------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail - 50x more storage than other providers!
About shipping have you considered DHL or FedEX, they have a pretty reliable global network.
----- Original Message ----- From: Anthere anthere9@yahoo.com Date: Wed, 21 Jul 2004 01:15:03 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Wikitech-l] HP Hardware donation To: foundation-l@wikimedia.org Cc: wikitech-l@wikimedia.org
Though it is not entirely fixed, here are some news of a hardware donation made to Wikimedia Foundation-------------An employee at HP in France has contacted us, offering us free hardware. This is a no-strings-attached donation from a few friends at HP who want to support Wikipedia. They reserve the right to mention this donation.
The machines offered are: * One 4U 6 CPU Xeon 750 with 1GB of RAM * One 4 CPU Xeon 700 with 2GB of RAM * One 6U 8 CPU Xeon 900 with 16GB of RAM and 2 SCSI drive max (which might work as a web server box immediately) * 3 Celeron 600 1U with 20G/ide and 128M of memory.There were a lot of discussion on irc these days about these servers and many people got involved to determine what would be best doing. First we decided to accept the offer :-) The 6 servers will be picked up 2 french contributors, Med and Cereal Killer on thursday. There will be a small shipping cost from Grenoble (the city where the servers come from) to Paris, which will be taken by the WMF.Med will install the Celerons. They will have a memory upgrade (the WMF will pay for this).
Yann has found us a hosting company ready to host the three squids for free, http://lost-oasis.fr/ :-)The three bigger servers will be shipped from Paris to Florida. We are currently trying to find cheap shipping cost. Any help/suggestion for *cheap* shipping is most we lcome. We'd prefer a company with good credentials, but there is no requirement in terms of shipping speed, so we might be able to find a good price. Please, help us if you know a good shipping solution. -----------I will set a page on the future wikimediafoundation website (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WMF/Main Page) to begin listing corporations helping Wikimedia projects.
________________________________ Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail - 50x more storage than other providers!
http://www.dhl.fr/ - DHL France http://www.fedex.com/fr/ - FedEx France in French http://www.fedex.com/fr_english/ - FedEx France in English
On Wed, 21 Jul 2004 08:32:38 +0000, Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason avarab@gmail.com wrote:
About shipping have you considered DHL or FedEX, they have a pretty reliable global network.
----- Original Message ----- From: Anthere anthere9@yahoo.com Date: Wed, 21 Jul 2004 01:15:03 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Wikitech-l] HP Hardware donation To: foundation-l@wikimedia.org Cc: wikitech-l@wikimedia.org
Though it is not entirely fixed, here are some news of a hardware donation made to Wikimedia Foundation-------------An employee at HP in France has contacted us, offering us free hardware. This is a no-strings-attached donation from a few friends at HP who want to support Wikipedia. They reserve the right to mention this donation.
The machines offered are:
- One 4U 6 CPU Xeon 750 with 1GB of RAM
- One 4 CPU Xeon 700 with 2GB of RAM
- One 6U 8 CPU Xeon 900 with 16GB of RAM and 2 SCSI drive max (which
might work as a web server box immediately)
- 3 Celeron 600 1U with 20G/ide and 128M of memory.There were a lot of
discussion on irc these days about these servers and many people got involved to determine what would be best doing. First we decided to accept the offer :-) The 6 servers will be picked up 2 french contributors, Med and Cereal Killer on thursday. There will be a small shipping cost from Grenoble (the city where the servers come from) to Paris, which will be taken by the WMF.Med will install the Celerons. They will have a memory upgrade (the WMF will pay for this).
Yann has found us a hosting company ready to host the three squids for free, http://lost-oasis.fr/ :-)The three bigger servers will be shipped from Paris to Florida. We are currently trying to find cheap shipping cost. Any help/suggestion for *cheap* shipping is most we lcome. We'd prefer a company with good credentials, but there is no requirement in terms of shipping speed, so we might be able to find a good price. Please, help us if you know a good shipping solution. -----------I will set a page on the future wikimediafoundation website (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WMF/Main Page) to begin listing corporations helping Wikimedia projects.
________________________________Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail - 50x more storage than other providers!
Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason wrote:
http://www.dhl.fr/ - DHL France http://www.fedex.com/fr/ - FedEx France in French http://www.fedex.com/fr_english/ - FedEx France in English
Thanks a lot Evar :-)
It seems that fedex is only making boat shipping above 70 kg. By plane, 50 kg is 500 euros.
I found nothing about boat shipping by dhl, by air is roughly 500 as well.
I thought of trying to call these guys, then I made a check list of what I did not know, and what I did know.
I do not know 1. The adress the server will leave 2. The adress where the server should be delivered 3. The weight of the server, as well as dimensions 4. The estimate cost for insurrance and such
I concluded I would not call them.
What about the italian option ?
I hope someone else is able to help Med, for he is leaving his appartment on the 5th of august. So, the issue should be solved by then :-(
On Sat, 24 Jul 2004, Anthere wrote:
It seems that fedex is only making boat shipping above 70 kg. By plane, 50 kg is 500 euros.
Might I suggest "air cargo"? Many airlines will handle cargo as well. Someone has to pack and deliver the item to the cargo dock and then pick it up at the receiving dock. This is a little more complicated when crossing borders -- it has to go though customs which most carriers (fedex, ups, dhl) handle (and add into your bill.)
As I've said before, shipping these beasts to the US is a Bad Idea(tm). They'll do more good for less cash if they stayed in Europe. (And, honestly, none of those machines are worth the cost of shipping them to FL USA.) [Unless someone is donating the shipping, too.]
--Ricky
Am Wed, 21 Jul 2004 08:32:38 +0000 hat Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason avarab@gmail.com geschrieben:
About shipping have you considered DHL or FedEX, they have a pretty reliable global network.
DHL might even be willing to "donate" the shipping? ;)
----- Original Message ----- From: Anthere anthere9@yahoo.com Date: Wed, 21 Jul 2004 01:15:03 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Wikitech-l] HP Hardware donation To: foundation-l@wikimedia.org Cc: wikitech-l@wikimedia.org
Yann has found us a hosting company ready to host the three squids for free, http://lost-oasis.fr/ :-)The three bigger servers will be shipped from Paris to Florida. We are currently trying to find cheap shipping cost. Any help/suggestion for *cheap* shipping is most we lcome. We'd prefer a company with good credentials, but there is no requirement in terms of shipping speed, so we might be able to find a good price. Please, help us if you know a good shipping solution. -----------I will set a page on the future wikimediafoundation website (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WMF/Main Page) to begin listing corporations helping Wikimedia projects.
________________________________Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail - 50x more storage than other providers! _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
On Wed, 21 Jul 2004 at 01:15 +0000, Anthere wrote:
The machines offered are:* One 4U 6 CPU Xeon 750 with 1GB of RAM* One 4 CPU Xeon 700 with 2GB of RAM* One 6U 8 CPU Xeon 900 with 16GB of RAM and 2 SCSI drive max (which might work as a web server box immediately)* 3 Celeron 600 1U with 20G/ide and 128M of memory.
There were a lot of discussion on irc these days about these servers and many people got involved to determine what would be best doing.
There was some confusion about the given HW:
3 * 1U (celeron 600, 20G IDE, 128 RAM) 1 * 4U (6xPIII 750, 2G Ram, 4*9G SCSI Raid)
Others box has been given to other projects.
phe
On Wed, Jul 21, 2004 at 01:15:03AM -0700, Anthere wrote:
The machines offered are:* One 4U 6 CPU Xeon 750 with 1GB of RAM* One 4 CPU Xeon 700 with 2GB of RAM* One 6U 8 CPU Xeon 900 with 16GB of RAM and 2 SCSI drive max (which might work as a web server box immediately)* 3 Celeron 600 1U with 20G/ide and 128M of memory.
There were a lot of discussion on irc these days about these servers and many people got involved to determine what would be best doing.
First we decided to accept the offer :-) The 6 servers will be picked up 2 french contributors, Med and Cereal Killer on thursday. There will be a small shipping cost from Grenoble (the city where the servers come from) to Paris, which will be taken by the WMF.
Med will install the Celerons. They will have a memory upgrade (the WMF will pay for this).
Yann has found us a hosting company ready to host the three squids for free, http://lost-oasis.fr/ :-)
The three bigger servers will be shipped from Paris to Florida. We are currently trying to find cheap shipping cost. Any help/suggestion for *cheap* shipping is most welcome. We'd prefer a company with good credentials, but there is no requirement in terms of shipping speed, so we might be able to find a good price. Please, help us if you know a good shipping solution.
Why won't we take advantage of the opportunity and place the servers somewhere in Europe ? It would greatly speed up things for European users.
Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
It would greatly speed up things for European users.
On Wed, 21 Jul 2004 11:58:58 +0200, Mathias Schindler neubau@presroi.de wrote:
Can you provide any data indicating that the 20ms-lag between this Atlantic bath tub does represent any kind of bottleneck for the average European user?
Regardless of the connection, splitting off some of the European Wikis onto their own hardware would mean better performance on the back-end, which should improve things significantly.
Also, I think it might encourage more such donations if would-be benefactors knew their contributions would directly improve the situation for their local Wikis, rather than being effectively being absorbed into the English Wiki (since it would see the lion's share of any overall improvement to the cluster in Florida).
If, as Yann and Anthere have already mentioned, we can even get free hosting in France for this hardware, this seems like a no-brainer to me. At worst, we could always ship the servers over to Florida at a later date if things didn't work out. We literally have nothing to lose, here.
-Bill
On Wednesday 21 July 2004 11:58, Mathias Schindler wrote:
Tomasz Wegrzanowski schrieb:
It would greatly speed up things for European users.
Can you provide any data indicating that the 20ms-lag between this Atlantic bath tub does represent any kind of bottleneck for the average European user?
12 ae-0-53.mp1.London2.Level3.net (212.187.129.161) 220 ms 230 ms 200 ms 13 as-0-0.bbr2.Washington1.Level3.net (4.68.128.102) 420 ms 300 ms 300 ms
20ms indeed...
Anthere wrote:
An employee at HP in France has contacted us, offering us free hardware.
This is a no-strings-attached donation from a few friends at HP who want to support Wikipedia. They reserve the right to mention this donation.
The machines offered are:* One 4U 6 CPU Xeon 750 with 1GB of RAM* One 4 CPU Xeon 700 with 2GB of RAM* One 6U 8 CPU Xeon 900 with 16GB of RAM and 2 SCSI drive max (which might work as a web server box immediately)* 3 Celeron 600 1U with 20G/ide and 128M of memory.
There were a lot of discussion on irc these days about these servers and many people got involved to determine what would be best doing.
The three bigger servers will be shipped from Paris to Florida. We are currently trying to find cheap shipping cost. Any help/suggestion for *cheap* shipping is most welcome. We'd prefer a company with good credentials, but there is no requirement in terms of shipping speed, so we might be able to find a good price. Please, help us if you know a good shipping solution.
I will set a page on the future wikimediafoundation website (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WMF/Main Page) to begin listing corporations helping Wikimedia projects.
Before things are shipped across the ocean, has there been any consideration of the effects arising from having machines designed to work off the European power grid put into the North American power grid. The supply voltage issue can probably be overcome with transformers, but a differnce in the cycling of alternating current rates (60 cycles per second in North America) could make them useless. Will they even work with the same monitors as are otherwise used in North America?
Ec
On Wed, 21 Jul 2004, Ray Saintonge wrote:
Before things are shipped across the ocean, has there been any consideration of the effects arising from having machines designed to work off the European power grid put into the North American power grid. The supply voltage issue can probably be overcome with transformers, but a differnce in the cycling of alternating current rates (60 cycles per second in North America) could make them useless. Will they even work with the same monitors as are otherwise used in North America?
(patting my UK model Alpha) The conversion isn't likely to be difficult at all... plug in a US model cable, and flip the little red switch on the power supply from 220V to 120V. *BAM* UK->US conversion complete. And this is assuming the power supply isn't autosensing.
(Even my desktop PCs have a switchable power supply.)
--Ricky
Ray Saintonge wrote:
Anthere wrote:
Before things are shipped across the ocean, has there been any consideration of the effects arising from having machines designed to work off the European power grid put into the North American power grid. The supply voltage issue can probably be overcome with transformers, but a differnce in the cycling of alternating current rates (60 cycles per second in North America) could make them useless. Will they even work with the same monitors as are otherwise used in North America?
Ec
euuuuh, what a weird question ...
I brought back two computers from USA, they were fine here for several years ;-)
of course, these were macintosh...
So- could you clarify whether Customs is or isn't going to take a large fee for letting these into the country?
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