[HCoop-Discuss] VPS hosting for HCoop

[Adam Chlipala]

Shaun Empie wrote:
> The only reason I was saying it wasn't a great idea is that it will cost
> more in the long run.  The setup we have now has fixed recurring monthly
> costs and fixed hw upgrade costs to expand.  A VPS has recurring monthly
> costs that go up once we start to expand.
>   

Right, but a lot of those costs cover staff who keep the hardware in 
order, replacements for broken machines, etc..  To get similar coverage 
on our own, we would need to always have spares of every kind of 
hardware on hand, which is a non-trivial new cost; _and_ we would need 
to have admins who are willing to go to the data center at all hours of 
the day, which is another non-trivial cost, since no volunteer is going 
to commit to that.  We would also need folks willing to go to the data 
center to set up new hardware as we expand.  We've seen how slow that's 
been with some of our recent hardware tweaks.

Once we have enough members that it's no big deal to pay admins to be on 
physical call 24/7, then it makes sense to own and maintain all of our 
own hardware, cost-wise, but I don't think it makes sense before that point.