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Announcements, Ideas, and Discussion - CHMW into 2021 and Beyond

Jwest7788

Joshua West
Administrator
Hey Everyone!

Hope all is well with you all as we continue this slog towards the end of the pandemic (if that will ever happen... haha)
I wanted to start a thread with regard to some upcoming changes, as well as some ideas floating around, and generally to have a "forum level" conversation about our group.

Quick update from my end
My son is just past two years old now, those first couple of years are a doozy, but boy am I ever feeling back to pre-baby Josh.
Keeping our family business going strong will likely always be a stress inducing time constraint, but lord knows I am looking forward to a meetup at some point.

1) Meetups - How should we be handling meetups as we march slowly towards vaccine rollout?
Let's not let this devolve too quickly, as the USA has shown that this topic can lead to infighting pretty quickly, however I would love everyone's thoughts and opinions.
I am not sure it makes sense to even host meetups until a predetermined point, nor do I know what that point would be. Neither do I want to feel like we're policing meetups..?
Video is always an option, should we start doing something regularly in this regard?

2) Sponsor - We have been approached by a potential sponsor
We'll have more information as this conversation rolls forward, however if anyone has thoughts, recommendations, concerns, or previous lessons learned, I am keen to hear them. Feel free to message me in this regard if you prefer.
We've had the benefit of some great guidance from members with specifically related experience in the past (@CalgaryPT and @Dabbler both pop to mind, but many more too), so welcome your thoughts.

3) Forum Hosting / Costs - Probably more changes coming down the pipe
Fun milestones:
We recently passed 1,000,000 forum pages viewed!
We're growing at a rate of 46% per year (over a three year average)!
1613019336009.png
Less fun milestone:
We're growing at a rate of 46% per year... We're likely going to out grow the current hosting solution. So, I am starting to plan out a migration for us ahead of time, instead of once there are issues from the strain like last time.

We actually migrated to a cloud server a few months ago, and while that can expand near infinitely, the cost to expand adds up quick. We're actually talking about phasing out this server at the office too, as it's costing the business thousands each month which we're not recouping most of, of which our forum makes up a portion.

For these reasons, I am likely going to swap our forum to a Calgary based server, for which I have a few that I can donate some space+cycles on.
You won't have to worry about the details too much, and I do a pretty good job of preventing downtime during that sort of thing, but I'll give everyone a heads up before pulling any levers on my end.

For the sake of sharing: I've actually been engineering and implementing a distributed server cluster across three locations in Calgary. It's been mainly a learning exercise but the natural redundancy means we should be able to host this website on that cluster without much trouble for a good long while. @Janger, @Alexander, I recently shared that I ordered one of those StarLink satellite internet dishes, this cluster is the reason why. I wanted to ensure the cluster has access to the internet even if shaw goes down.

The one detail to discuss with this plan as it relates to our site: I didn't actually build that cluster with hosting a website in mind. Starlink covers us if the internet drops, but I figured a power outage would take home's power offline anyways, so wasn't worried about it. As such there is one spot of weakness in the idea: power outages.

Two options for discussion:
1) We can just accept that the website would go down if the power in South Calgary goes out?
--> This is not what most would consider "production ready", by any means, but we're not actually hurting that badly if the website goes down for an hour or two, not like a tech company would be bleeding revenue by the minute. We would just be down for a bit.

2) Even with a generous $200 donation recently, we're ~$700 shy of the cost to put a (used, old enterprise gear) fix in place for this one, but I am not confident the expense makes sense, if we can just bear the downtime?

Either way, we'll be free from a big chunk of our expense in the forum, a lot more future proof than I thought we needed to be, and also independent of my work, so that's all a step in the right direction. Also, the website will be in Calgary, so Calgary area members will likely experience a faster website, as we can cut out a bunch of speed optimization cruft for those members. (See: cloudflare)

There's probably more going on, but I am headed to bed, will add to this thread tomorrow if I've missed anything!

Next Morning Edit:
4) Advertising - What if we can generate revenue without bothering members with ads?

Right, I had a point I was getting to. Though my stance has always been against banner ads on the site, when speaking with a colleague in the advertising space, he floated an idea which I wanted to run by everyone:
What if we put some banner ads on the forum, but the moment anyone logs in, regardless of member level/status, the ads disappear?
Basically, 99% of people who even care enough to read this post don't see any ads, but the bulk majority of users who come once to read a specific forum post they found on Google, support the forum via ad revenue?
Google had a forecasting tool, which seems to think we would pull in ~$1100 per month (which I doubt) but it does have me thinking.

Otherwise, sometype of fundraising may be in order?

5) Chapters - Planning for future
I participate in a charitable organization (related to leveraging data and analytics expertise to help non-profits sort through their data to become more effective at helping canadians), one aspect of the organization I volunteer at, which I keep thinking about as it relates to CHMW is the concept of different "Chapters" representing different locations.

We had previously began making location specific sub-forums, but in total they have something like 15 threads, for all locations other than Calgary Area.
This idea was on the right path, but it's missing one key element which was important to the Calgary Area's growth. Meetups, and generally local community.

The issue with meetups, outside of there being a pandemic, is my general inability to host meetups all over the place directly. We need boots on the ground. But equally I don't expect anyone to just stick a hand up and start sinking time into hosting meetups on a regular basis at the start, when they would be missing the very community which incentivises hanging out with CHMW in the first place.

The idea of attracting volunteers to new cities who wear the hat of "Chapter Lead", and generally work towards building a local-to-them community is probably just the kick we need to increase activity in new cities.
Generally getting the full support of our organization, but having a specific meetup requirement (quarterly?) would probably be a good balance?



JW
 
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Swharfin'

Out to pasture Red Seal Millwright
I can't express enough that this is MY opinion and situation only.
Just a bit of why I choose to buy into this particular forum and not another. It was independent, no ads, an excellent knowledge base, populated with easy going people willing to share their ideas, knowledge, experience, constructive critique, wit and guidance. So I gave up say 2 trips to Tim's a month and like other seniors living on fixed incomes it's always about dollar value. If it takes a few less groceries a month keep this forum as is, so be it lots of rabbits on my property, I've skinned out backstraps out of fresh road kill shhhh!, dumpster dived as in my local landfill encourages salvaging out of the metal pile
({ before Covid ) hum did you notice spellcheck doesn't recognize Covid as a word, my anti virus must be working).
 

Hruul

Lee - metalworking novice
I am fine with respects to ads if it allows the site to get going. I would hate to lose all the knowledge and entertainment this site has brought to me over the last about three years (wow does not seem that long). I am ok with the site being down for a few hours at a time due to internet loss, power outages , and upgrades. I do not look at this site as a requirement and only became a premium member to help out keeping it going, not because I expect it to be available to me at all times. The IT stuff is all over my head so I won't even venture an opinion on any of that.

I trust that Joshua and the admin. will take the site in the right direction for the bulk of the users and would like to thank you all for the extra work you do to keep it running and such a great place to visit.
 

CalgaryPT

Ultra Member
Vendor
Premium Member
I'm with @Hruul on his points. While no one likes ads, I don't see them as a harbinger of bad things to come, but more of an unpleasant necessity at some point. I'm OK with them assuming we don't overwhelm the pages with so much advertising it is distracting. WRT downtime—while nice to know there is a backup, let's be honest: we're not an essential service and there is no such thing as a hand tapping emergency. The power issue is a valid observation though. While I do have UPS backup, many don't. Even if you do, most home systems provide an hour or two at most—and I'm unlikely to pull out a generator just to access this site after my UPS runs out. What might be worth consideration is to accept outages as a natural occurrence, but communicate if they are longer term. For example, either a mailout after X number of days with an update, or an alternate webpage on a different server where status is posted. This lets us know it is being worked on, and gives updates as to progress with the outage. From the perspective of contingency planning, I can deal with outages of hours, or even days. But beyond that I am not so much interested in when the fix is coming, just that it is being worked on and a webpage/email/person I can get status updates from.

As for finances, I'd like a semi regular update to members if money is required. Personally, I try to stay away from monthly sign ups (membership fees), but like to donate one-offs as the need is identified. If the forum needs money, I am happy to contribute, but need some indication what the forum is short and when it is needed. I also appreciate that many members are not in a place to do the same, and that is just fine. I think the dual approach of one-off donations and membership is good. Do we need money now Josh? If we are $700 short, I'd like to know if you want donations now so I can assist.

I'll refrain from the Meetup discussion just because I'm not really a Meetup kind of guy. But I think when the time is right these are a good thing. I have noticed that for months after attending them, members seem to continue to reference the event...so that is an indicator of success.

A couple of final points. I maintain that simplicity and the path of least resistance is critical for volunteer based groups. If we ask too much of Admins (for free BTW), we can be assured at some point they will lose interest or motivation and we can't blame them for this. All these "nice to have features" mean an Admin somewhere is burning cycles for no compensation. I include being a Moderator in this comment.

And lastly, I wonder if it isn't time to lose the "Calgary" in the "Calgary and Canadian Hobby Metalworkers and Machinists" references on the site and in Google search results? This is important if the desire is to grow, and to make others feel more welcome.

Thanks @Jwest7788 , @Janger , @Alexander et al for all your work. Without you guys it wouldn't be possible for all of us to realize the great benefits we get from the site.

Great to hear an update from you Josh; I'm so glad you and your family are well. PM me WRT money and donations if needed.
 
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YotaBota

Mike
Premium Member
I've been a member for just over a year now and have gained much knowledge and hope I have contributed some as well. The site is however, the instigator of my bank account be less than it was a year ago LOL.

Advertising - I know sites need to be payed for but personally I hate ads. If not seeing ads had been a perk of premium membership I'd have paid a long time ago.
What are peoples thoughts on the disabling of ads being part of the acct upgrade package?

Chapters - How do you see chapter divisions?, provincial?, timezone?, pacific/prairie/central/atlantic? What is the advantage to forming chapters over the current format? What is going to be the maintenance, monetary and labour costs of this change?

Very much agree with CalgaryPT,
If we ask too much of Admins
And current admins need to not ask to much of themselves, what can be handled now may become a burden in the future.
My thanks as well to all our admins and maintainers.
 

Chicken lights

Forum Pony Express Driver
I'm with @Hruul on his points. While no one likes ads, I don't see them as a harbinger of bad things to come, but more of an unpleasant necessity at some point. I'm OK with them assuming we don't overwhelm the pages with so much advertising it is distracting. WRT downtime—while nice to know there is a backup, let's be honest: we're not an essential service and there is no such thing as a hand tapping emergency. The power issue is a valid observation though. While I do have UPS backup, many don't. Even if you do, most home systems provide an hour or two at most—and I'm unlikely to pull out a generator just to access this site after my UPS runs out. What might be worth consideration is to accept outages as a natural occurrence, but communicate if they are longer term. For example, either a mailout after X number of days with an update, or an alternate webpage on a different server where status is posted. This lets us know it is being worked on, and gives updates as to progress with the outage. From the perspective of contingency planning, I can deal with outages of hours, or even days. But beyond that I am not so much interested in when the fix is coming, just that it is being worked on and a webpage/email/person I can get status updates from.

As for finances, I'd like a semi regular update to members if money is required. Personally, I try to stay away from monthly sign ups (membership fees), but like to donate one-offs as the need is identified. If the forum needs money, I am happy to contribute, but need some indication what the forum is short and when it is needed. I also appreciate that many members are not in a place to do the same, and that is just fine. I think the dual approach of one-off donations and membership is good. Do we need money now Josh? If we are $700 short, I'd like to know if you want donations now so I can assist.

I'll refrain from the Meetup discussion just because I'm not really a Meetup kind of guy. But I think when the time is right these are a good thing. I have noticed that for months after attending them, members seem to continue to reference the event...so that is an indicator of success.

A couple of final points. I maintain that simplicity and the path of least resistance is critical for volunteer based groups. If we ask too much of Admins (for free BTW), we can be assured at some point they will lose interest or motivation and we can't blame them for this. All these "nice to have features" mean an Admin somewhere is burning cycles for no compensation. I include being a Moderator in this comment.

And finally, I wonder if it isn't time to lose the "Calgary" in the "Calgary and Canadian Hobby Metalworkers and Machinists" references on the site and in Google search results? This is important if the desire is to grow, and to make others feel more welcome.

Thanks @Jwest7788 , @Janger , @Alexander et al for all your work. Without you guys it wouldn't be possible for all of us to realize the great benefits we get from the site.

Great to hear an update from you Josh; I'm so glad you and your family are well. PM me WRT money and donations if needed.
Well said, as usual
 

Tom Kitta

Ultra Member
I would wait on the vaccine part to see how it all develops - currently only known factor is that our PM did terrible job securing the vaccines and we are running out & soon to be out of top 20 in the world & bottom of even OECD. Thus at this time it is anyone's guess when 75-80% of pp will be vaccinated. It is also anyone's guess what polices will be in place at that time - probably social meetings will be allowed but masks will be either mandatory or highly encouraged. Covid-19 is the new flu, especially as it mutates creating some rather potent strains. Video is an option - I reserve the right to use kitty filter - makes me feel like a lawyer ;)

Sponsor is a good idea as long as it is done in a way the sponsor is not "obnoxious" - i.e. I do not want to find out that now we are all owned by said sponsor, that we cannot criticize openly said sponsor or that we have to buy products from such sponsor.

Cloud solution is great except when it comes to price - it can scale to infinity and so do costs. I think more sane approach is to try to figure out cloud solution as "overload" or "backup" and rely on more traditional server solution for majority of the load.

Sooner or later we will have to allow some advertising - unless we find some sponsors. As long as advertising is "easy on the eyes" I have no issues with it. I doubt monthly fees will be popular and they would put a great damper on site growth.

Chapters do sound like a great idea - that or get everyone to move to Calgary.
 

DavidR8

Scrap maker
Administrator
Moderator
Premium Member
At the risk of exposing my complete and total ignorance, is a cloud provider such as AWS or Google out of the question?
 

John Conroy

member
Premium Member
I'm OK with ads as long as they don't come in the way of pop ups. I agree with the others who don't think a back up power source is necessary. I really appreciate what Josh and the other moderators do here and if I can help in any way let me know. I am retired and have some free time.
 

kevin.decelles

Jack of all trades -- Master of none
Premium Member
is a cloud provider such as AWS or Google out of the question?

Depends. Architecture (server hosting vs. micro-services vs. IaaS vs. PaaS vs. SaaS), bandwidth, redundancy etc. all affect the equation. Some workloads price well for the cloud, some do not. Cloud computing is not cheaper pound for pound than dedicated hosting on a 1:1 basis BUT, cloud computing can scale horiz/vert with virtually no bounds whereas dedicated computing cannot. The question is can you justify the cost of the elasticity.

Modern workloads, designed correctly can be designed for consumption (use as required) whereas legacy workloads (server, database) were designed to be 'always on'. When you're paying $/? (where ? is CPU compute, bandwidth, storage), you want modern design. For legacy loads, you're paying hardware (upfront) + electricity.

Take modern day analytics. You can 'rent' massive compute power for a burst of time to create data models, store the results, and then power off/destroy your components. You only pay for the compute time for the period of time you computed, and perhaps the storage cost of the results. You're not paying for the compute 24x7 in case I happen to refresh the site at 4am when getting a drink of water. I work in IT and this is basically my day job. Which is why I do machining at home the rest of the time, and only really use my computer for CNC, Fusion and this forum (pay me for that plug)

I have the uttermost respect for the work done by @Jwest7788 and the admins to keep this site available and running. I put 0 (zero) time into the process ergo I expect 0 (zero) votes in the process. I would never criticize an outage, down time, feature, decision, color, wording etc. You're basically getting something for FREE with no commitment. Act accordingly.


My thoughts on the questions:

Meet ups: Informally, couple of people? IM to communicate it? Sure. This happens every week. Broadcasted/published gathering on this site in the next 10 months? I'd avoid it. Too many people, with nothing better to do, sitting at home WAITING to see/hear themselves on the evening news/radio narc'ing out a group. The public shaming going on with social media is getting worse.

Advertising: Doesn't bother me UNLESS it isn't passive (in the background). If I have to 'wait' 15-30 seconds like you-tube..... well, then you're consuming my time and I value that a LOT. It's the one thing I have precious little of each week to apply to what I want.

Sponsor: No issues, would prefer a rule where they can't post personal messages. Really irritating when sponsor can't read a negative post about his/her product, and then jumps in with 10 or 20 employees to post song/dance replies.

Chapters? Already happening, just informally. If only we can get @YYCHobbyMachinist to learn the handshake.....

Keep up the great work and if this was as good as it got, I could live with that.
 

Janger

(John)
Administrator
Vendor
@Jwest7788 Josh - so if you move the server then it will be cheapish for some years? What will it cost now, in a year, in a few years? just some guessing would educate us as I have no idea.

I think the occasional outage due to power or whatever bump is no big deal - we're not 911. If it drags on and on then I agree it would be nice for everyone to know we're working on it.

A sponsor or three might be nice - a maker space would be a neat place for the forum to go. A place for meetups and some equipment that is too big or just too much for the home shop. Paint booth anyone? water jet table? plasma table? Maybe we'll get there. For sponsors though I agree it needs to be unobtrusive and non irritating. It's good this isn't a business - it's more like the library. So we can make sure it won't be annoying.

City chapters are an interesting idea - is there anybody who wants to do that? I mean take it on to do some organizing and hosting? Once it's safe to do so of course.

If somebody wants to organize the next meet up - virtually I suppose - step up!
 

Jwest7788

Joshua West
Administrator
Thanks for the replies everyone!

, let's be honest: we're not an essential service and there is no such thing as a hand tapping emergency.
Hah, love it. Couldn't agree more. @CalgaryPT, you're also spot on with regard to the site title. I've removed the Calgary from the forum Title (which was probably the very first thing I wrote in the forum settings back in ~2015). It's time to lose that locality a bit.

Based on the comments here we could have probably waited awhile before pushing a call for donations, as I think we're in agreeance than it's not the end of the world if we're offline for a few hours if something happens.
However, there was a small flurry of donations since my post went up last night, so we're actually only $300 (OK, We're good!) off from putting in place a solution (I.e. buying a bunch of batteries for a large UPS I have access to).
If anyone else is on the fence, I figure we're better to make it the last chunk rather than have me idly sitting on ~$700, better we put it to use.
Consider this a call for donations.
I'll contribute anything we're short come the time I'm going to place the order in a few days if required.


We're Covered!

What are peoples thoughts on the disabling of ads being part of the acct upgrade package?
I was thinking disabling them for anyone who is logged into the site. Basically only show them to the other folks who never took the time to register at all.

I'm OK with ads as long as they don't come in the way of pop ups.
I would rather eat glass than subject myself to pop-ups, let alone force them on you fine folk. haha

so if you move the server then it will be cheapish for some years? What will it cost now, in a year, in a few years? just some guessing would educate us as I have no idea.
Well, I already bought the servers involved, so that's cool. Ignoring that up-front cost, which I volunteered for independent of the forum anyways, the forum specific hosting cost will be reduced from it's current amount...
Part of the issue is that right now the cost is mixed with a few other sites, so the water is muddy about what percentage our forum bears directly. This is part of the issue I hope to get us away from, that muddyness of shared hosting. I know that this forum is one of two high traffic websites hosted in this google cloud server alongside a dozen or so very very low traffic sites. I know that the server costs ~$1500/month. As well, the old server we were on that was having all those stability issues, has been basically fine since we moved the forum off of it. So, subjectively the forum has some weight to it. I think it's mainly a metric crap-load of database queries and small file downloads, as the actual storage and bandwidth throughput aren't too crazy high, but the forum does seem to carry a taxing burdon for servers for some reason. --> Probably an optimization opportunity in there somewhere for me.

Anyways, answering the question, we basically remove the "cloud hosting fee" from the equation completely, which leaves odds and ends to worry about, Xenforo licence, a plugin licence for some functionality that makes it nicer around here (like the fun :cool: ratings, instead of just likes, if I recall correctly.) In place of hosting fees, we take on some electrical cost, but that's small compared to Google fees.

I expect costs from then forward will be related to hardware changes to the server. On the short list will be a proper enterprise SSD dedicated to the forum, but this sort of thing would be as needed, so it could months, or years.
I won't be sure until the site is running locally. --> @kevin.decelles you have any idea how to forecast that sort of thing?
Basically costs will switch from a steady hosting fee, to periodic upgrades as needed / as it makes sense. I hope to keep ahead of any issues on the horizon, unlike in the fall.
--> In theory if the site grows, like, a ton, eventually a newer server, or maybe a migration back to the cloud down the road, but I don't think we need to worry about that for awhile.

Between here and a year, I expect there will be a handful of odd and ends, like the above mentioned SSD, which will be logical items to support the database the forum uses, but generally webserving is supposed to be easy work for a server, so I can't yet predict what else we might run into, but will deal with it when it pops up.

Years from now, I hope we're having a conversation like this again, this is about as close to the concept of "growing pains" as we could experience, so this is generally good stuff. Hopefully we have some sponsors down the road and this is less of an issue by the time we need to worry about it.

A sponsor or three might be nice -
Fingers Crossed!

City chapters are an interesting idea - is there anybody who wants to do that?
Dibs Calgary. lol
 
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Swharfin'

Out to pasture Red Seal Millwright
I'm with @Hruul on his points. While no one likes ads, I don't see them as a harbinger of bad things to come, but more of an unpleasant necessity at some point. I'm OK with them assuming we don't overwhelm the pages with so much advertising it is distracting. WRT downtime—while nice to know there is a backup, let's be honest: we're not an essential service and there is no such thing as a hand tapping emergency. The power issue is a valid observation though. While I do have UPS backup, many don't. Even if you do, most home systems provide an hour or two at most—and I'm unlikely to pull out a generator just to access this site after my UPS runs out. What might be worth consideration is to accept outages as a natural occurrence, but communicate if they are longer term. For example, either a mailout after X number of days with an update, or an alternate webpage on a different server where status is posted. This lets us know it is being worked on, and gives updates as to progress with the outage. From the perspective of contingency planning, I can deal with outages of hours, or even days. But beyond that I am not so much interested in when the fix is coming, just that it is being worked on and a webpage/email/person I can get status updates from.

As for finances, I'd like a semi regular update to members if money is required. Personally, I try to stay away from monthly sign ups (membership fees), but like to donate one-offs as the need is identified. If the forum needs money, I am happy to contribute, but need some indication what the forum is short and when it is needed. I also appreciate that many members are not in a place to do the same, and that is just fine. I think the dual approach of one-off donations and membership is good. Do we need money now Josh? If we are $700 short, I'd like to know if you want donations now so I can assist.

I'll refrain from the Meetup discussion just because I'm not really a Meetup kind of guy. But I think when the time is right these are a good thing. I have noticed that for months after attending them, members seem to continue to reference the event...so that is an indicator of success.

A couple of final points. I maintain that simplicity and the path of least resistance is critical for volunteer based groups. If we ask too much of Admins (for free BTW), we can be assured at some point they will lose interest or motivation and we can't blame them for this. All these "nice to have features" mean an Admin somewhere is burning cycles for no compensation. I include being a Moderator in this comment.

And lastly, I wonder if it isn't time to lose the "Calgary" in the "Calgary and Canadian Hobby Metalworkers and Machinists" references on the site and in Google search results? This is important if the desire is to grow, and to make others feel more welcome.

Thanks @Jwest7788 , @Janger , @Alexander et al for all your work. Without you guys it wouldn't be possible for all of us to realize the great benefits we get from the site.

Great to hear an update from you Josh; I'm so glad you and your family are well. PM me WRT money and donations if needed.
Thanks for saying it in a way I could not
 

Chicken lights

Forum Pony Express Driver
I have zero idea what a UPS battery is nor do I want to ask, but if we needs one we needs one. I chipped in but I’m really better off not knowing why UPS is in the battery business
 

TOBARApprentice

Super User
While it is an opinion from the East, mine would be no adds. If there us an annual fee to pay then so be it as the resource is well worth the price. Yes lads, your opinions and guidance is worth money. As for a sponsor, so long as it is a “partner” of the forum. I used to watch MrPete on Youtube. While my reasons for no longer watching his channel are associated with his politicizing of his channel, I didn’t
like how Bangood and others were shamelessly sending the guy stuff in order to promote their wares. If a sponsor wants to use the forum to promote a product and maybe start a conversation thread about that product, its uses, strengths and weaknesses, then I’m all in.

Cheers all.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 

kevin.decelles

Jack of all trades -- Master of none
Premium Member
Forecasting costs really depends on your risk-strategy, business structure (corporation vs. proprietorship etc.). For enterprise IT, most large companies do not run their own data center-- they rent space in one (Bell/Q9.....). Your costs is then per KVA. For that money, you get redundant power feeds, redundant internet options (multi-vendor) etc. You may get your own rack, or share one to run your equipment. You have an SLA with the provider for 99.xxx uptime etc. The sites are secured, inaccessible and typically require bio-metrics (retina scan/fingerprint) to get in.

The equipment in these cases is likely leased, or bought/depreciated/replaced on a 3-5 year cycle. the choice of what to do it typically based on the current IT trends, but ultimately I find it is in the hands of the accountants who figure out whether you want the cap-ex, or the operating expense , how to depreciate it etc. How do you want this to look in your current budget year. Regardless, you are paying continually either way. You rarely ride out equipment (here comes the risk tolerance). And this all works because (wait for it)............. you have a revenue stream to pay for it.

We ran our own data-center until 2012. Not cheap. UPS systems the size of a Toyota Camry are not cheap. Neither are cooling systems etc. I never want to go back to those days. Renting datacenter space is also not cheap. And hey, moving to the cloud is again, not cheap.

If I were setting up a cluster of servers, I'd probably put a plan in to replace the equipment every 3-5, have a data backup/recover strategy (which you need to practice) etc. Depending on your server setup, disk mirroring/RAID setup should be considered. Enterprise grade servers typically come with redundant power supplies/network cards so if one fails, the other kicks in.
 
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