[tech] Club Hosting: VPSs vs Integration

David Adam zanchey at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au
Wed May 25 22:31:09 WST 2011


On Wed, 25 May 2011, Ash Tyndall wrote:
> Recently, the committee approved the provision of UCC services for paid club
> hosting. The specifics of the prices and such have already been decided on,
> however, there are some implementation issues that I think need discussing.

We approved it *again*?
http://www.ucc.asn.au/infobase/committee/2007/2007-03-26.txt

> The initial thought of the committee was that a VPS system would be the
> easiest for those clubs which need more than just web hosting services; it
> isolates the clubs, allowing them to configure a myriad of services while
> still being easily locked in case of non-payment.
>  
> However, VPSs come with certain security issues that make them not the most
> ideal technology for club hosting, even if that club needs additional
> services. The fact that they clubs are in charge of the security of the
> server means such things may be neglected.

VPS is a somewhat nebulous term that encompasses a broad range of 
technologies; I assume in this specific case you are talking 
about virtualised or paravirtualised machines (VMs).

> For example, the UWA Atheist & Skeptic Society, who are (beside CSSC) the
> only club interested in this service, only need web hosting, some
> procmail/postfix routing and a mailman instance to run on their domain
> uass.asn.au.
> 
> In this case, configuration files would be in a variety of places on the UCC
> servers, making account locking difficult if it needs to be done. VPSs solve
> this problem.

A questionable assertion :-)

> However, on IRC, [JCF] has raised an objection to the necessity of VPSs,
> even for the use case that UASS has.
> 
> It was suggested that due to the infrequency of the request, and the lack of
> issues with account locking in the past, that the security benefits of
> integration outweigh the advantages of VPS-based service isolation.
> 
> "We're probably better off sticking with what we do well rather than
> introducing something we're less likely to maintain in the interests of
> security."
> 
> I am personally for integration; it makes it much easier for the club, as
> they don't need to perform software-based maintenance. What are other
> people's opinions?

I don't really care. Basically it comes down to how much you are willing 
to do yourself (where "you" is the club in question). If you want to 
configure things without having to involve wheel members and are happy to 
deal with all the issues, go for your life. Differences in quality of 
service are probably negligible.

(There is an analogy for in-tree and out-of-tree Linux drivers, but 
frankly I think we've expended enough words on this as is.)

David Adam
UCC Wheel Member
zanchey at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au


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