[OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Linux VPS

[Ben Shum]

Hi Bruce,

I've used Linode for personal applications like IRC and testing web
services, but have not applied it towards any live Evergreen systems.
I have created test droplets with DigitalOcean too, back when they
were one of the leaders in use of SSD disk storage, and that was
certainly a nice hosted environment.  The SSDs make things speedier
when you don't necessarily have all the memory you'd like to run
things fast.

These are some areas I would be check before using any third-party
host environment:

1)  Making sure to spec out a powerful enough system (or more than one
instance if needed).  Getting the right amount of resources for CPU,
RAM, disk space can be very important when putting together a proper
Evergreen system.  Even a test server could malfunction on less than 2
GB of RAM (with memory killers wrecking your installed instance).  So
having an appropriate sized instance is important.

2)  Knowing what your data protection services are like.  In the past,
with groups like DigitalOcean, they had issues where the data in the
instances could be leaked due to not properly deleting content between
node rebuilds (which has since been fixed, as far as I last read).
But how safe is your data "in the cloud"?  What rules govern how your
instances are accessed?  With library data, I try to be cautious on
this front.

I'll let others chime in when they can, but hopefully this gets some
conversation going for you.

Good luck in your investigations, and feel free to ask further
questions as applicable.

-- Ben

On Thu, Nov 5, 2015 at 10:12 PM, Bruce Willms <bwillms at frontiernet.net> wrote:
> We are just gearing up to set up an instance of Evergreen and are wondering
> if anyone is running the system on a hosted VPS service like Linode.  It
> seems like a reasonable solution in our case since we don’t have IT staff to
> support a server, etc.  I’m curious to know if others have done this and
> what their experience has been – good, bad, or otherwise.  Or if this is a
> recipe for disaster.
>
>
>
> I’m new to this list and to Evergreen, and looking for some pointers from
> experienced hands.
>
>
>
> Bruce Willms
>
> East Side Freedom Library
>
> St. Paul, MN
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>



-- 
Benjamin Shum
Evergreen Systems Manager
Bibliomation, Inc.
24 Wooster Ave.
Waterbury, CT 06708
203-577-4070, ext. 113