[Centos] Release of centos-3.3 ISP bill

[Chris Hammond]

How about making the primary download of "NEW RELEASES" to be 
bittorrent.  And put
a limit on the amount that can be downloaded via ftp or http (if that is 
something you can
do with your current setup).  Let the people that are downloading share 
in the process
and make things much easier on your servers, bandwidth and bank account.

Chris
 

Greg M. Kurtzer wrote:

>I have received many emails regarding our mirror setup, and people asking more
>specifics about the amount of data transferred and the costs...
>
>Configuration: We rent 3 systems at a colo, all of which come with 1TB of 
>pre-payed for bandwidth. Each of these systems are part of a round robin DNS 
>pool for mirror.caosity.org, and payed for by different members of our devel 
>team. This is where all of our public Tier1 mirrors are supposed to sync from
>(http://caosity.org/download/mirrors/). Now we already know that _many_ more
>mirrors then what is listed on our mirror page are sync'ing from it, and 
>individual computers are running yum against it. We thought that the 3TB
>provided by these mirrors would be sufficient to handle our traffic load. We 
>were right 2-3 months ago. :/
>
>Now,... I said an "estimated 6TB", and here is where I got the estimation. One
>system's owner is being charged for an _extra_ 1TB of data transfer. I have not 
>heard from the the owners of the other 2 systems yet,... This is why it was 
>an _estimation_ of 6TB. rrDNS is known for not implementing an even 
>rotation (due to caching), so I wouldn't be surprised if the other systems 
>have _slightly_ different numbers.
>
>Here is the directory layout of mirror.caosity.org:
>
>   5.5G    cAos-1
>   14G     cAos-2
>   6.3G    centos-2
>   31G     centos-3
>
>   18G     centos-3/3.1
>   14G     centos-3/3.3
>
>   note: some repos include hard links
>
>As cAos-2 is also new (but not released yet), it too would have been a
>contributor to the transfer load.
>
>Usually I don't like to divulge finances as publicly as this, but considering
>the interest I have gotten I will let on to some numbers... The first bill was
>in generous excess of $500US. I would imagine that the other two bills will
>also be near that, putting the grand total somewhere around $1500US. Typically
>we spend $80US per system (which is reasonable), and this charge is ontop of 
>that. The Foundation also has a rather substantial "I owe you" list to several
>of the developers which we are hoping will be paid back when/if we receive
>enough donations.
>
>How to fix: We have always been throwing the idea around of blocking access to
>our primary mirrors and only letting through the Teir1 mirrors. We have not
>done that (yet) because of the potential of breaking the update stream to many
>systems (most yum.confs currently point to mirror). Another solution is to get 
>more systems to put into our mirror rrDNS pool. Or we can find someone willing 
>to host a very large temporary mirror for new releases and point people there. 
>We will be discussing these issues and more in IRC #caos for anyone that wish 
>to provide thoughts or input.
>
>I hope that clears up some confusion. :)
>
>Thank you for all of the interest and ideas that this has sparked. I am sorry
>if I don't respond directly to each of them, but I think I answered all of the
>questions that were asked of me in this email. Let me know if I missed
>something.
>
>
>
>On Tue, Oct 26, 2004 at 10:32:32AM -0700, Greg M. Kurtzer wrote:
>  
>
>>It turns out that the release of Centos-3.3 was so popular, that it threw us
>>way over the threshold of our ISP's, and now we are stuck with a _very_ large
>>bill (as in an estimated 6TB of transfers). While in one hand I am ecstatic
>>that we are so successful, but on the other hand, that is coming out of the
>>developers pockets. The developers should be the last ones footing these
>>bills (and this one was very large).
>>
>>You can help. Please consider a donation for each of the systems that you are
>>using. A reasonable donation we think starts at $12US per system per year. 
>>That money is only spent on infrastructure and development. $12 is much 
>>cheaper then a magazine subscription, and if everyone contributes their 
>>share, we will be able to grow our infrastructure to better handle our 
>>growing user base, and continue to provide software to the community.
>>
>>Please visit http://www.caosity.org/contributing/ to do your part.
>>-- 
>>Greg M. Kurtzer
>>http://runlevelzero.net/
>>http://caosity.org/
>>http://warewulf-cluster.org/
>>_______________________________________________
>>CentOS mailing list
>>CentOS at caosity.org
>>http://lists.caosity.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
>>    
>>
>
>  
>