[Foundation-l] Fundraising season launch

[George Herbert]

On 10/10/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 10/10/06, Brad Patrick <bradp.wmf at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > If we have +/- 250 servers running now
> > *and we double in traffic every four months
> > *and the costs per server (for round number purposes, including racks,
> > power, etc.) are $4000
> > *we are talking about *starting* with a $1M computer order being
> > fulfilled before March 1.
> > If we add to that the next 500 computers, at the same rate, we are
> > talking about a batch of $2M beyond that.  /me's head spins.
>
>
> Heh. What's the upfront and service contract on an IBM minicomputer -
> make that two clustered in different cities - running as many copies
> of Linux/390 as we need?
>
> (I wonder if IBM would sponsor that, just to say they had.)



This is probably not the right mailing list for that discussion, but my
impression is that the 390 systems are great for running huge quantities of
virtual servers with moderate load, but not cost effective for huge amounts
of CPU run flat out.

I've been wandering around mailing list archives, the
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_servers and
https://wikitech.leuksman.com/view/Main_Page webpages, and ... I still can't
figure out an entry point or enough status info on what's going on, for
helping out with the server admin and architecture stuff.  I've been told
the wikitech-l but nothing's there either.

This is a particularly bad area for the Foundation to have be opaque.

My day job is a consultant in systems architecture and project management
for UNIX and Linux.  I've designed and built and operated similarly sized
sites before.  I would like to help with this area, from systems
architecture through operational management and documentation (and hands on
admin if need be).  Where do I start?


-- 
-george william herbert
george.herbert at gmail.com