I want to run more hands-on training sessions with virtual machines and I want to do some of them remotely to train people in other parts of Australia. The servers we currently have are inadequate because we have nowhere to run them 24*7. So here is the message I sent to the Linux Australia list. ---------- Forwarded Message ---------- Subject: possible grant request for training server Date: Sun, 14 May 2017, 02:39:59 PM From: Russell Coker <russell@coker.com.au> To: "linux-aus@linux.org.au" <linux-aus@linux.org.au> NB This is not an actual grant request. This is a discussion prior to determining what grant to request. It could be that LA members offer what is needed without the need for an LA grant request. http://tinyurl.com/pkqpgyx The German hosting company Hetzner offers a range of very affordable servers at low prices, the above URL has links for some of their best value for money offerings which includes E39 ($57.70 according to xe.com) per month for a system with 64G of RAM and 2TB of RAID-1 storage (250G of SSD isn't enough and 500G of SSD makes it too expensive). For some years my blog has been hosted on a VM on such a Hetzner server and the LUV server is on another VM on the same system. So Hetzner has been working well. In the past LUV has run a number of training sessions about system administration. This has included setting up DNS, mail servers, Cassandra, BTRFS, and ZFS. Those sessions have been well received. I am sure that other LUGs in Australia could run similar hands on training sessions. I don't think that the grant required would be justified for just LUV use, but I anticipate that other LUGs in Australia will make use of it - if only to go through the course work that I and others have prepared for LUV. But I really hope that other LUGs will develop course work too. If we had a spare server for running VMs, I would be happy to run the Dom0 and set things up to allow people from various LUGs to grant access to VMs to their members for training sessions at meetings and also for online training over IRC or other IM systems. Another possibility instead of Hetzner is that I have an offer of free hosting in Melbourne with a reasonable number of IPv4 addresses (maybe dozens of addresses as opposed to Hetzner offering few addresses and making you pay extra for them). But that free hosting requires a system that's not too noisey (I was told to remove a previous system LUV had for this purpose because of the noise). If someone has a spare system with 32G+ of RAM and isn't noisey (IE not rack mount) then that would be an option. http://www.dell.com/au/business/p/poweredge-t30/pd A Dell PowerEdge T30 can take up to 64G of RAM and starts at $1,087 (maybe less with RACV discount). I'm not sure how much it costs to expand it to 64G, the Dell web site isn't helpful in this regard. I am not set on Dell, it's just a really easy way of getting a price to start the discussion. As an aside buying a Dell will be cheaper than renting at Hetzner for 2 years. If an LA member has a tower server that's they don't need which can take a suitable amount of RAM then that would be great, CPU power is not a requirement, just RAM and storage. If such a server isn't in Victoria then I'll apply for an LA grant for courier fees. Please offer any suggestions about cheaper ways of achieving these goals. If you want to start a more general discussion about servers for running Linux then please change the subject. -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/ ----------------------------------------- -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/