Student Server Room Proposal

This is a current work in progress of the proposal/things that need to be done to work towards getting a student server room. Please add on anything you feel appropriate and add questions to the discussion section.

Student Server Room Proposal
This is a proposal made by the GNU/Linux User Group at Hampshire College and affiliates to create, organize, and operate a student server room for the benefit of the Hampshire College, Five College, and Internet communities.

The purpose of the server room is to provide students with hands on experience to learn how networks operate and how digital services can be provided over these networks. We also plan to provide a wide range of services for students such as file repositories, Div III space, XMPP services, and Student Group Web server Space. This project will promote student learning and collaboration in many interdisciplinary areas.

Governance Committee
Main Article: First Governance Committee Draft Bylaws

The governance committee will consist of five(5) members. Three(3) of these members will be students, one(1) from IT and the other member from either the staff/IT/ or student body. IT should be involved on the committee for maintenance purposes and to ensure the longevity of the project. The purpose of the governance committee is to maintain financial oversight of the student servers and the space and also to arbitrate disputes about what services should be provided. The day-to-day administration of the servers will be handled by students. The first draft bylaws of this governance committee can be found here.

Requirements
The proposed space is a small portion of the FiCOM room located behind the Airport Lounge because of its 24 hour accessibility. We need a space that will be available to students at all times in order to maintain the level of service that has become expected from computer administrators. This space may require renovation, i.e. moving a wall, to properly house the servers and be considerate of the current office users. Air conditioning will need to be installed along with proper connectivity and power. Josiah has committed to donating racks for the servers. Students will maintain ownership of their servers, both of hardware and software. The servers should run using free software.

Security
This space needs to be available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. We propose to have lock sets installed on the door with a key available to one volunteer student to let others in when needed. The governance committee will be in charge of choosing this volunteer.

Considerations:

 * Process for putting a machine in the room, need to consider resource constraints.
 * For now, all students will be accepted into the room until we reach the point where space is at a premium. The governance committee will come up with a suitable procedure to address that contingency during its first few meetings.


 * Students maintain ownership of the server, both of hardware, software.
 * Establish some sort of terms of use collaboratively with IT and the students.
 * These terms of use will be in place to make sure that all access and services comply with community guidelines and also will co-exist peacefully with already existing infrastructure and services on the school network.

Next Steps:

 * 1) Talk with Josiah about funding from IT and where all equipment will come from.
 * IT will provide us access to the school intra/internet access and network equipment(ie. Switches, etc)


 * 1) Figure out sources of funding and interested parties.
 * Since this will be a student run venture, one of the main sources of funding will be from the SAF via COCD.


 * 1) Need to firmly decide on a space and get estimates from Physical Plant.

So far
Talked with COCD. Wants me to talk to Pamela Tinto.They're definitely going to support us once we get a proposal and talk to Pamela Tinto and also Physical Plant to get an estimate.COCD has roughly $20,000 dollars right now and they allocating money for projects right now so if we need the money we need to get the proposal to them ASAP.

3/2/10 - We need to figure out the best location for this, I just talked with John Bruner about what we discussed last night. He said that getting any sort of cable into the FPH practice space was going to be impossible and that he has tried multiple times himself. Looks like this is a less of an ideal space then we were thinking. He suggested maybe going for a locked rack somewhere and emphasizing the educational aspect of the project and how we could use vm's to teach people linux. We also talked about looking further into finding a room in one of the dorm basements. This sound like a really good idea. I think we should proceed with trying to investigate using a dorm basement room. I will try to ask Josiah about where network backbone is in them.

3/03/10 - I contacted the Merrill house office and Director and inquired about the basements but unfortunately, discovered that the Merrill Basements are out of the question. The storage rooms sometimes flood during the summer and the only other available space is being utilized by the Omen's staff. I've contacted the Dakin house master and I'm also waiting to hear from her office. Also, no one has talked to Pam Tinto yet. I'm planning to stop by after class(around 3.30) and see if I can speak with her then. Ill update this page when I do so. I will also be going in to meet with COCD at 6pm tonight with this proposal to formally request some funding from them.

3/03/10 - John Bruner seems to think we might be able to get some space in Lemelson. Josiah said he was going to take a look at it and would let us know if it would be suitable for our purposes. John Schanck thinks it would be suitable for our purposes since Lemelson is already a hacker space and also because the space is already noisy(so we wouldn't have to worry about the noise the AC and other equipment make) and I agree with him. We will have to decide on a space and get estimates from Physical Plant and submit to COCD before they can determine how much they are going to give us. I'll take a look at the potential space in Lemelson tomorrow and report what I think about it(and also what Josiah thinks about it) on the mailing list.