[ALUG] Working group 2 (Collaboration Workspace)

[brian]

[I think my previous post may have gotten mangled by the web interface, I'm 
trying again]

On Tuesday, 20 August 2013 10:18:36 UTC+1, Richard wrote:
>
> As was noted in the minutes of our 2nd meeting, working group 2 will 
> collect ideas and thoughts
> on creating a collaboration workspace for learning, hacking, building 
> things, mentoring
>

For the "hacking and building things" part, I suggest you set up a small VM 
server. This is then technology-agnostic: people can develop services under 
Linux, Windows, FreeBSD, or whatever they feel like.

I propose you start small. Don't budget for buying *any* hardware: just 
start using an old PC you happen to have lying around, and run KVM or 
VirtualBox on it. You can grow when the demand arises. If you have a choice 
then it would be nice to start with a CPU which has 64-bit and VT-x 
capability, has 4GB+ of RAM and 160GB+ of hard disk, but you can start 
smaller than that.

Each VM will want to be accessible to the Internet. If you can't get a 
public IP for each one, then at least run a HTTP reverse proxy (inside 
another VM) with port 80 on a static IP address. It can forward HTTP 
traffic to the correct VM, based on the Host: header. You can also set it 
up as a mail relay, to forward SMTP inbound and outbound. If you can get 
IPv6 too then great, the proxy will only be needed for IPv4 clients.

Give a VM to anyone in the group who wants one and can demonstrate a use 
for it. Give root access on the VM server itself to anyone in the group who 
demonstrates sufficient technical competence. Then you can both spread the 
admin workload, and share the experience gained from administering this 
system.

If you want something a bit more fun to build, then look at building a 
two-node Ganeti cluster. Ganeti is basically a KVM manager, but it also 
manages DRBD for replicating storage: so a VM running on PC1 can have its 
storage replicated to PC2, and vice versa. You can then live-migrate a 
running VM between nodes. If you add Ganeti Web Manager you can also 
delegate the ability to start/stop/reboot a VM to its owner.

This is more like a real data centre setup, but is still free. With two PCs 
each on a separate UPS you have a pretty impressive level of resilience.

Anyway, just a suggestion!

Regards,

Brian.

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