[tlug] [announcement] ASAHI Net VPS sponsorship and TLUGs network services

[Edward Middleton <emiddleton@example.com>]

TLUGs' network presence has gone through a number of changes.  In 1994,
we started with a web page and a conference on a local ISP[1].  In 1998
, TLUG put together its first server[2].  Recently we added a wiki[3],
setup a blog aggregator[4], reopened the mailing list archives[5],
suffered a slashdotting and streamed live video[6].

When possible TLUG has provided hosting for these services, but at times
we have had to rely on our members to provide hosting.  For some things
this has worked OK but for others less so.  Getting access is always a
problem when services are hosted on private servers.  We needed a better
solution.

Towards the end of last year, ASAHI Net offered TLUG the use of three
virtual private servers VPS.  Last January, after consulting with the
other TLUG officers, I made an agreement with ASAHI Net.

Over the last couple of months Henri Servomaa, Jim Tittsler and others
have been working to get our current services running on the new VPS's.
Last week they concluded the final preparations and our website, mail
archives, mailing lists, and Wiki are now running on two of the ASAHI
Net VPS's.


Q/A

Q. Why change?

A. The are two main reasons.

* lower maintenance

With the old server, a hardware failure required us to organize a visit
the datacenter to replace the failed component.  We could only visit the
datacenter during business hours.  With the VPSs' the hardware
maintenance is handled by ASAHI Net.

* Capacity to expand

Our old server,  consisting of a Pentium III processor and 500 MB of
RAM, was reaching the limits of its capacity.  The ASAHI Net VPSs' each
have 4 x 2.8 Ghz Intel Xeon cores with 4 GB of RAM.  One VPS would be
sufficient to run our current services.  This extra capacity gives us
the potential to expand what we host.  More details about the VPSs' are
provided on the ASAHI Net website[6].


Q. What new services will we run?

A. Some things I would like to see are

  * video archives.
  * video streaming server.

  we are obviously open to suggestions.


Q. What will become of the old server?

A. We are currently in negotiations with NETWORLD but if they agree, we
would like to use it for backup and content storage.  The old server has
120GB of RAID1 storage space which could be useful.  ASAHI Net has
provided us with one extra large VPS with 40GB and two standard VPSs'
4GB of disk space each.   We currently use about 20GB so this is more
then sufficient.

Edward Middleton

1. http://tlug.jp/wiki/TLUG_Timeline#1994
2. http://tlug.jp/wiki/TLUG_Timeline#1998
3. http://tlug.jp/wiki/TLUG_Timeline#2006
4. http://tlug.jp/wiki/TLUG_Timeline#2007
5. http://tlug.jp/wiki/TLUG_Timeline#2008
6. https://asahi-net.jp/en/service/hosting/secure.html