[OSM-talk-nl] OSMF fondsen & hardware

[Grant Slater]

Stefan de Konink wrote:
>
> No problem, I wonder who pointed you on this thread anyway. Please 
> take this text as constructive, it is not intended to be written as 
> troll, flame or whatever. It is written between 2:45 and 3:30am so... 
> not the time these mails should be written anyway.

A few questions from the thread were asked on IRC  #osm. I followed up.

> Will this happen again? Because according to my potential sponsor 
> counter we are now on 4 potential hardware sponsors, for NL alone.

I'd be very happy to chat or be a bridge to the OSMF for potential 
sponsors. I was not aware of any others.

>
> ...
>
> My math system generally is only able to deduce one variable per 
> equation at the same time. Even if the 2.500 euro's that were left 
> over were spend on hardware we are not even close to 60%. If you don't 
> find this /curious/ you might want to tell your users 6k was spend on 
> legal or travel costs? Things that user group probably doesn't give 
> anything about.

Best to ask OSMF treasurer.  As stated in the report, the £3500 spend on 
hardware in the previous year was low.

>
> Is this also the case for the Platinum sponsorship?
>

Slow in paying, yes likely. Don't most companies wait till 89.5 days. ;-)

>
> Are the PIII servers still connected? If so, we might have a job for 
> them :)
>

No, the 2x PIII servers are not currently connected. Let me know what 
you need them for and I can try get them connected.

>
> The very simple question is of course: it is known to many that there 
> is commercial usage of OSM data. I cannot understand and will not take 
> for granted that only the minor users of OSM are willing to invest 
> into hardware. Therefor the donation seems like a we (read: OSMF) need 
> money, and the most easy way is to just ask the users.

Yes you are correct. The sysadmin team is getting nervous about the 
rapidly approaching 0.5->0.6 migration weekend. The OSMF did not have 
the available funds to purchase the required DB server upgrade. A 
donation drive was seen as the quickest and easiest option. The 
community generously supported the donation drive. Over the next few 
months, I hope to tap commercial users for support in other hardware 
upgrades. (Assistance always appreciated). I think 2009 is going to be a 
large growth year for the project.

> Now what also was discussed on IRC; I presume this 10k will probably 
> go to a 0.6 server, leaving other hardware available for other jobs. 
> Just trowing new hardware to a job that is basically one single point 
> of failure or performance bottleneck is not really going to help the 
> users after a new data donation of lets say France or Italy.

The 0.6 API / DB has extra consistency checks which opens the doors to 
additional database servers and replication.
The server moving completely to MySQL-InnoDB (or PostgreSQL) also 
increased the storage requirement beyond the space we currently have.

The current DB server is an up-spec'ed desktop machine, it's amazing it 
has lasted us this long.

> Now I sincerely hope OSM gets a freaking Sun X4540, with 64GB* of RAM 
> and decent 48 disks array. And if someone is really smart, maybe ask 
> if OSM can get it for free, instead of buying it with this new money. 
> You can afford it anyway now :)

This is my intention. Got any good contacts at Sun or HP? ;-)

>
> * at this amount of memory, ditching MySQL for something else might be 
> an option.

A lot of work has gone into making the 0.6 API backend compatible with 
PostgreSQL, unfortunately no promises yet. Maybe 0.601 ? :-)

Kind regards
 Grant