[H-ADMIN] Excalibur Hosting

[Russell Stuart]

Robert,

Russell Stuart here, newly elected president of Humbug and acting with
that hat on.

We had a discussion at the last Humbug meeting regarding hosting of
Excalibur.  It was raised by me.  I had seen your posts on Sage-AU, and
was very concerned that Humbug was burdening someone who was likely
going to be unemployed with paying for Excalibur's hosting.  I think it
is fair to say that was felt universally, to the point that it was
suggested several times we should reimburse you for the hosting you have
paid for to date.  That may still happen, in fact it will almost
certainly happen if you express a desire for it, but that is not what
this email is about.

This email it to tell you the options we looked at, and ask you for your
preference, is any.

1.  As I think you are aware, Netbox Blue has suggested they might be
willing to host a VM for us for free.  This hasn't happened yet,
primarily because of slackness on my and Jerub's part.

2.  Humbug could just purchase a VM somewhere and move to it, abandoning
the one we have.  This was at one stage the most popular option at the
meeting.

3.  You could hand over the "keys" to the current VM to us.  Concerns
were raised about how whether that was in fact even possible.  Maybe
Linode doesn't make such a transition easy.  Humbug doesn't have a
credit card, so how would we pay for it?  Although I didn't mention it,
if we ended up using a members credit card I don't see how the situation
would be much different to you say handing over the passwords to Humbug,
and Humbug paying you in advance for access.  If you prefer this, it
would seem a much more sensible option to me.

In the end a compromise was reached.  I proposed the Exec give me till
the next Exec meeting (Sat, 14-11-2009) to get the box moved to free
hosting.  If that deadline isn't reached the Exec will move it to paid
hosting.  That still leaves the choice between options (2) and (3) above
of course.  Should we reach that point, what option would you prefer?


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Regards
Russell Stuart
+61 438 805 133