[CentOS-mirror] UK Mirror centos.zanker.org

On Fri, 2008-11-07 at 15:06 +0000, Gavin Spurgeon wrote:
> Hi Mike,
> 
> >> I am currently running a CentOS Mirror (Here in a UK Data Centre) for
> >> personal use. I run a private mirror of both x86 & x86_64 of CentOS v5.
> >> I do have quite a large Monthly bandwidth allowance as well.
> >> What are the typical stats of a mirror and I will see if I can turn my
> >> private mirror into a public one...
> > 
> > Gavin, mine's been running at about 1TB per month in total, but that's
> > with all releases and architectures plus CD isos (but not DVD).
> 
> 1Tb a month is a lot less that I thought... My mirror does not have the 
> .iso's just the YUM Repos mirrored.
> 
> Do I 'really' need to do the .iso's ? I would have thought the 
> BitTorrent is/would have been better to distribute the .iso's

Not trying to insight too much, but BitTorrent is actually quite bad as
a distribution mechanism when compared to even a very minor mirroring
system.  It's use-fullness and desirability gets even less appealing
when you look at it from the perspective of mirror servers participating
in the BitTorrent cloud.  BitTorrent is non-trivial to setup and use,
anyone on this list would have no problem, but many users can't or don't
know to setup their networks to make proper use of it (really BT is a
usability nightmare).

This is not to say that BitTorrent doesn't have it's place.  It's a very
useful tool far out fringes of the network cloud (Australia and New
Zealand are prime examples), and for moving content that does not have
an established mirroring setup.

That said Centos has a very well established mirror setup, and even has,
what look to be, good mirrors near the fringes.  BitTorrent really
doesn't make sense and this won't be the first, or last, that I advocate
distributions - including Centos - just flat out give up on it and drop
support for it as a primary distribution means.  (If you want I wrote,
and presented a paper on this at OLS this year, it can be found in the
proceedings archive at
http://www.linuxsymposium.org/2008/ols-2008-Proceedings-V1.pdf - the
title of the paper is "Issues in Linux Mirroring: Or, BitTorrent
Considered Harmful" page 173)

- John 'Warthog9' Hawley
Chief Kernel.org Administrator