OpenUru.org

Hi folks,

This topic may already be covered by Funding and accounting for servers in this forum, but the context is new so I hope it's okay to start a similar topic.

I'd like to start thinking practically about putting a hosting service on the .net TLD of this domain. Not immediately, but eventually, after some careful consideration of members here.

What I'm thinking:
- Provide something like AWS EC2 (Amazon Web Services) instances for use by OSgrid/open sim and eventually Open Source Uru
- Install a subscription/billing/server provisioning system - preferably an open source solution
- Without time myself, we need willing techies to help
- Profit and compensation should be considered for skills, time and materials so the service can sustain itself and promote the idea of commercial talent services for Open Uru

If you wonder whether there is an intention or possibility to host discreet or private MOUL shards, the answer is absolutely not. This is a strictly legal proposition and anything else will not be tolerated. Not until Cyan publishes licenses for use of content and open source code that make it legal.

This is a means of supporting a growing interest in grids and how that relates to and could help ramp up an Uru community that is waiting for Open Uru. It could be interesting in itself, but I want to be very clear that the only reason for doing it here is to get a head start on an infrastructure for Open Uru or Uru interests generally.

Fair warning: licensing terms to eventually be published by Cyan will dictate whether this will all have been worthwhile. I'm not sure we want to delay further by waiting to find out.

I am still at kind of a loss about resolving whether to post in this project or the System Concepts project. But perhaps I will keep it here as long as it concerns building a service provider infrastructure for OpenURU.net. System Concepts might be better considered as a project for how to use server instances, whether physical or in the cloud, for Uru and other things once this cloud infrastructure is there to support them. That's probably the best I can do to set a differentiation between this and System Concepts: infrastructure versus instance. So with that in mind, I've moved this topic here from System Concepts.

As I've said, My goal here is to find a front end solution to offer cloud services via OpenURU.net for Uru shards, and now grid hosting, with pricing set by OpenURU.net for operational costs, but transparently billed to each account owner. That's what I want - a solution for provisioning and billing through something like a cooperative here. What I don't want is to burden OpenUru.* with management. Let each shard or grid owner worry about management of their instances and charges.

Let's review the requirements:

- Provide something like AWS EC2 (Amazon Web Services) instances for use by OSgrid/open sim and eventually Open Source Uru
- Install a subscription/billing/server provisioning system - preferably an open source solution
- Without time myself, we need willing techies to help
- Profit and compensation should be considered for skills, time and materials so the service can sustain itself and promote the idea of commercial talent services for Open Uru

Towards that end, I have created an account on AWS (Amazon Web Services). That's the easy part. Amazon recommended RightScale.com to provide a white label front end service to put on our domain here. I asked about that because I wanted to avoid all the time and effort developing to the AWS API ourselves. I wanted something ready out of the box that could get installed on this domain. It turns out RightScale.com is not offering a white label service quite yet, and it might be for bigger fish anyway when they do. So I got some alternatives from my Amazon rep. I haven't done much looking around at them, but I notice at least two of them are open source. In any case, it looks like there will be some development requirements. That means time and effort up front from volunteers. But that's how much of Open Source Uru is going to work.

So where we stand at the moment is to look at these possibilities, or something like them:

http://cloud42.net/
https://scalr.net/login.php
http://www.enomaly.com

This is the first step toward a solution. Any impressions from these or suggestions of other alternative and a summary of their strengths is appreciated. The less development required, the better.

JWPlatt wrote:I am still at kind of a loss about resolving whether to post in this project or the System Concepts project. But perhaps I will keep it here as long as it concerns building a service provider infrastructure for OpenURU.net. System Concepts might be better considered as a project for how to use server instances, whether physical or in the cloud, for Uru and other things once this cloud infrastructure is there to support them. That's probably the best I can do to set a differentiation between this and System Concepts: infrastructure versus instance. So with that in mind, I've moved this topic here from System Concepts.

System Concepts was specifically about getting an Open Source Uru up and running. The scope of the facility you're proposing here is broader than that, so I think this is the right home for it, and that it is better that System Concepts refers out to here when necessary, rather than the other way round.

I'm not that up on Cloud setups. I tend to work only with internal business servers and outside the firewall web hosting. So, single server and shared server hosts are about it.

I am assuming OU is hosted as a shared server rather than a dedicated server (BLUEHOST-NETWORK-4 ?). So, I am wondering how much server side control is available?

Some of installations are from a binary or Java based setups. That would seem to require significant server side control of this host.

I think you'll find that JWPlatt is actually proposing to offer a kind of admin portal to something like a EC2 service provided by AWS rather than actually hosting things here.

That means you can have a scaleable multi-server solution being provisioned by AWS, but with billing and server management served from here (or on OpenUru.com, I think). Cloud servers aren't quite like either dedicated servers or shared servers; maybe better to think of them as VM instances of servers. You dial up how many you want, what configuration each has and press "go" and the system creates your cloud - oversimplification but, that kind of thing.

The front end would execute on this domain, but all the services would exist in the cloud. It's highly unlikely that any shard or grid would be hosted with the host providing services to OpenURU.org. And even the front end could be on a totally different server on a different host (or in the cloud) and still apear on this domain via a DNS CNAME. That's how rarified's Foundary is set up on this domain. By the way, Java hosting demands more performance and so is more expensive. I ran into that while looking for a place to host JIRA for evaluation. OpenURU.org's host does not support Java simply because it is expensive and a resource hog, relatively speaking. So rarified stepped in again to host it himself on Foundary.

Cross-posted with Mac_Fife. Combined, that's a pretty good summary. And it would be on OpenURU.net.

JWPlatt wrote:And it would be on OpenURU.net.

I knew it was something other than OpenUru.org, and just took a stab at it