Talk:Infra colophon

Server migration

• Why to migrate?
• Where to go?

From Linode to Greenhost or Domaine Public. Both are shifting to virtual cloud services. Domaine Public has datacenters in Belgium.

• What is a non-cloud server?

This answer doesn't only refer to outsourced solid/all-in services, indepedent, self-governed entity (sovereignty). It can also refer to inter-depedencies, infra-inter-institutional practice.
Collectives/ connecting with others: using other infrastructures, narrowcast, organising practices, bridging, fragments of infrastructures
How to phase out, how to stop maintenance, not keep growing, dealing with dependencies, temporary infrastructures? Maybe look at: Let's get things done first. Issue of time, how long or how much in sense of intensity. Text with Seda, Femke, Jara and Miriyam.
It is not only a technical setup but also a political practice.

• How do you find non-cloud servers?

Diary of server migration

August 2023

Steps further:

• Send an email to domaine public to ask for future plans with cloud hosting.

June 2023: Domaine Public or Greenhost

What do we mean by cloud? It is the backup approach.

Send an email to domaine public to ask for future plans with cloud hosting. Cloudy approach to provide backup through redundancy but maybe servers in netherlands. If they use the same logic but local and environmentally ok.

We use the migration to understand how to practice these things. Deep problems with cloudy approach. Is it an act of resistance to sign up with Greenhost and not with AWS right away. What does it mean if DP to the cloud? Linode was UK based for independent projects but then bought by x-computing company. Cloud as an approach. Greenhost sells sovereignty.

Who controls the servers?

Their scales are different. For example Greenhost seems bigger and they have the resources to develop work around sustainability and define deeper their approaches. Domaine Public seems to have a smaller scale and it comes from bottom-top approach based on collective work. Greenhost seems more stable for maintenance and monitoring.

Permacomputing suggestions?

Domaine Public provides cloud and tools installed through their own interface and Greenhost provides VPS. VPS operates on a single server. Not sure if Domaine Public provides cloud hosting; infrastructure of cloud hosting is a computer network that uses multiple connected servers located in different geographical locations and has to do with scalability. Cloud hosting allows you to scale your resources up or down as needs change.

DOMAINE PUBLIC

Language 

Open a Cloud (meaning Nextcloud), autonomy, non-specialist, critical community, multiplication of networks

Technical

It uses free software. Offers several open source tools including icecast, BBB, jitsi and it uses alternative google analytics for daily web statistics with Matomo

They offer an interface for administration.

Thinking of resources: "Machine resources: Some scripts may have technical faults (untimely connections, excessive use of certain resources). In these cases, users may be asked to modify their scripts to make them less resource intensive."

Backup not reliable. They decided to not have a cloud approach and do temporary backups (save a copy): cloud approach is to produce uptime, depend on continuous uptime and in order to get there you duplicate, multiple servers to step in when something goes wrong and it is resource intensive. Greenhost does cloud approach and can afford it. DP does regular backups and they may be offline. Cloud approach produces instability.

Nothing on future plans in relation to clouds. Where are the data centers?

Opening a hosting account: Full account - 30€/year, Support account - 100€/year
Opening a cloud: up to 100GB - €50/year

Objectives

Some of the objectives are noted here.

• Non-commercial and independent Internet and collective work
• Overcome the compartmentalization between users and technicians
• Shared documentation for transmission of knowledge
• Critical community: "a reflection on the use of the Internet, mainly on its implications in terms of data security, protection of privacy, freedom of publication and circulation of information(...) against the freedom-killing implications of certain laws and regulations (laws against cyber-crime, software patenting), and personal data marketing practices."

Note: it focuses on privacy. Maybe good to ask them what is their perspective on clouds.

• Multiplication of networks: partnerships with other structures, with a view to the decentralized multiplication of alternative and supportive information and accommodation networks.
• Working groups: With regard to the organization of work and the mode of decision-making, each group is autonomous. The "administration" group, the "technical" group, the "management" group and the "publication" group.
• Legal association Alternet: "At the same time, a non-profit association, called "Alternet", was created. It constitutes a legal structure which can represent Public Domain if necessary."
• Sharing of resources: "In the idea of ​​a sharing of resources between the members, the latter will take care not to make an excessive use of the disk space and the resources of the server."

GREENHOST

Do they use their own servers?

If we sign at these servers do we sign in AWS?

Check their project https://eclips.is/

technical

They provide VPS with SSH access and use Linux.

Optionally, Greenhost can store (stateless) backups of your VPS's.

VPS Green 2: Processors 1, Memory 2 GiB, Disk Storage 10 GiB Data limit 5 TiB / month, € 12.40 / month

• Powered by 100% Dutch wind energy
• Servers located in the Netherlands
• Xen based hybrid virtualisation: uses a combination of at least one private cloud and at least one public cloud, which works together to provide a flexible mix of cloud computing services.

Objectives

The Internet as a free and open space is under pressure every day. As such, the distributed foundations of the Internet and the data and privacy of individual users should be safeguarded.

They actively participate in the projects regarding digital security and human rights, by sharing knowledge, supporting partnerships and developing open source applications in-house.

Sustainability: "On a global scale, the Internet and the ICT sector are responsible for high levels of energy waste and environmental pollution. We are part of that industry, but we want to take responsibility and do what we can to lower our negative impact. This starts with hosting, as this takes up most of our energy consumption."

Detailed information on their data centers: https://greenhost.net/sustainable/energy

Human rights work at Soundeast Asia: "The last two data centres are less focused on sustainability than our Amsterdam data centre. Unfortunately, we did not have a lot of choice in that matter. Our priority was finding two data centres in spots that would enable us to provide a fast and stable connection for human rights defenders in Southeast Asia and the American continent. This is an area of continued attention to us."

May 2023

Moving from Ubuntu to Debian because it seems that the second allows for more possibilities and 'deeper' access to the server. And Ubuntu has derived from Debian as a distro.

Check if the new server space allows for many levels of permissions.

Build the new space from scratch and migrate only wiki.