Orxonox Server Replacement

[patrick]

I think novic has a point in his comments!

about the server: there are 2 threads running in parallel about the server. I assumed that all our stuff will be moved to the biwi or did I understand something wrong?

[x3n]

no, it's not yet decided. BIWI is just another option and we're not really sure if there's a difference to the (not so good) offer we've already got from the ISG.ee

[beni]

There will not be any difference between the offer of the ISG.EE and the BIWI. The BIWI does not have a server room and is, as any other institute, slave to the ISG.EE.
Usually the institutes can get some extra fine treatment by the ISG. So the TIK got special super computers and the infrastructure provided by the ISG to an institute could be quite cool.
Nevertheless I do not think that the BIWI will be able to help us to get a better deal with the ISG.EE.

About Nowic' proposal. Of course this is right, that there are a lot of free open-source project helpers, which would leave us with no administration overhead, but then the ISG offer would be acceptable as well.

[1337]

What about camouflaging our server and putting it somewhere in the ETZ or ETF or ETL?
No way the BIWI can offer a place to stay for our box?

[greenman]

the problem is not just the place, where we can put the box at, but also the network access: we need access to the server network (VPN104) and a special utp

so just hiding the server somewhere would be quite tricky and not really desirable

[beni]

We must be able to somehow hack the ISG administration to actually give network access at the designated port close by where we hide our box. Then we would have to somehow shadow our changes of that port, so nobody would notice that there is a additional port.
And we would also have to shadow our net traffic through that certain network without the other servers noticing. As this will work with a central DNS, we would have to hack the DNS server as well and somehow make the changes permanent.

So you see, hiding the box is not really an option ^^.

[1337]

I'm glad you're all as serious as I am

[BadElvis]

Apart from going to the ISG once a semester to have them make svn accounts for the students, what further drawbacks would the ISG-option have? No new svn repostories, ok, but we only need one anyway.

[greenman]

dont we already use multiple repositories now ?

- we would not be able to have a dedicated testserver of orxonox running
- we would be limited in space (not extremely, but still)
- I don't know so far how the dns resolution would look like then
- we depend on the isg versions of the software we use (forum, trac, apache, svn, etc)
- probably other things that don't occur to me now
- and theres always this feeling of being dependent to someone ...

[beni]

Which would be the same when we would host everything elsewhere, like at Google or somewhere where they host free projects.

[greenman]

any news on that ?

[beni]

Okay, as it became quite clear, finding a place for our server is a NP-hard problem. So we have to use distant computation power anyway, regardless if it is our own, if we have root permissions or if there is only a simple web interface.

Prof. Sz?kely said he talked to the ISG and I'm positive that we would be able to host everything we'd like on the ISG infrastructure. This also goes for any other place, like Google, Sourceforge etc.

Taking the wish for independence into account and also an aspect of future plans, an own server would be the better choice. Installing plugins, software, updating and maintaining is more work, but also means freedom. With future plans, a possible dedicated game server could also find its way to the Orxonox server. Of course in this case we would have to change our infrastructure most likely anyway, but we could easily port everything onto a new infrastructure because we're root on everything.

And since we also have a solution for the own server, why shouldn't we just do it like this?

[beni]

Just that it is written here as well:

Apparently VSETH is not as evil as they seem to be . Pascal Gohl from the board of the VSETH has called me to tell me about several things concerning our server including a great offer from their IT department.
According to Pascal, beer-drinking maniac and former president of the AMIV, the head of VSETH's IT department agreed on granting us a VM (virtual machine) to run our server on. This seems to be a great offer, I have to reach Markus Pilman (this head of the IT department) first. I sent him an email, but I should probably try other addresses as well. I'll write more if there is more to tell .

[patrick]

great, just great