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IMPORTANT! Server hosting and costs - possible shutdown of Pitboss hosting!

Hey everyone

I'm very sorry to report that the server hosting company that have provided our free hosting solution for a long time now has run into some economic difficulties and has had to downscale their server park. As a result I come with some bad news. I've received a notification today that either he needs to start charging some cash for the server hosting, or the server will be shut down on October 9th, 23:00 GMT+2.

I checked out some similar services, and found that OVH offers a server hosting solution (VM-based as well) where it would cost $26.99 per month for these specs: OpenStack KVM,SLA 99.99%,2 vCore(s),3.1 GHz,4 GB RAM,50 GB,High Availability (Ceph)

The offer we have been given is to retain the current server at a minimum of $20, a maximum of $25, per month (Which, given our available specs and resources, which is superiour to the OVH server, is a very generous offer).

Now, there may be someone in the community who is willing and have the opportunity to step up and take over the hosting - which is of course a great idea. But if there isn't, would the members of the community be willing to chip in a buck or two each month to pay for this? I can set up a specific Patreon or something for it, and I will of course make sure that the invoices and receits for payment are available for everyone to see for transparency. The server would be invoiced to me personally, so I would have to pay it personally, and report back to you guys.

If someone is willing to take over the hosting instead of a community payment service, the current server can be stopped, saved and downloaded as a VMWare disk image, and I can provide the image for anyone who wants it - just for the record. smile
As the Americans learned so painfully in Earth's final century, free flow of information is the only safeguard against tyranny. The once-chained people whose leaders at last lose their grip on information flow will soon burst with freedom and vitality, but the free nation gradually constricting its grip on public discourse has begun its rapid slide into despotism. Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master. - Commissioner Pravin Lal, "U.N. Declaration of Rights"
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I'm happy to chip in. I hope to join another pitboss some time in the future...
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I'm also willing to contribute a few dollars a month to continue a hosted solution.  I have a home lab with capacity to host the pitboss server but it comes with no uptime guarantees and I have no service SLA smile  So obviously that would be a last resort if we can't fund hosting in a public cloud somewhere.

Played: Pitboss 18 - Kublai Khan of Germany Somalia | Pitboss 11 - De Gaulle of Byzantium | Pitboss 8 - Churchill of Portugal | PB7 - Mao of Native America | PBEM29 Greens - Mao of Babylon
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I'll chip in but what would be needed to run our own host server?
Current games (All): RtR: PB80 Civ 6: PBEM23

Ended games (Selection): BTS games: PB1, PB3, PBEM2, PBEM4, PBEM5B, PBEM50. RB mod games: PB5, PB15, PB27, PB37, PB42, PB46, PB71. FFH games: PBEMVII, PBEMXII. Civ 6:  PBEM22 Games ded lurked: PB18
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(September 25th, 2017, 16:56)Old Harry Wrote: I'm happy to chip in. I hope to join another pitboss some time in the future...

RtR, ToW or base?
Current games (All): RtR: PB80 Civ 6: PBEM23

Ended games (Selection): BTS games: PB1, PB3, PBEM2, PBEM4, PBEM5B, PBEM50. RB mod games: PB5, PB15, PB27, PB37, PB42, PB46, PB71. FFH games: PBEMVII, PBEMXII. Civ 6:  PBEM22 Games ded lurked: PB18
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Set up the Patreon, I'll chip in for a couple of dollars.
Travelling on a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam.
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I have created a Patreon page at https://www.patreon.com/rbpitboss for this. My full name is disclosed by choice, for transparency (I have no problems with it either - it is easily discoverable by a simple Google Search on "Caledorn" anyways).

If you decide to pledge, and another solution is found, I will refund any pledged money that has actually been transferred to the account via Paypal!

@Krill: Someone needs to have hardware available that can either host the games flat out, preferably where giving access to the server admin team is not an issue so that people don't have to go back to a rely on just one person to restart/reload any crashed game situation - or alternatively hardware that is powerful enough to host a VM (in which case such access should not be problematic to grant either way, as it would be jailed from any other software running on the computer bar any security issues).
As the Americans learned so painfully in Earth's final century, free flow of information is the only safeguard against tyranny. The once-chained people whose leaders at last lose their grip on information flow will soon burst with freedom and vitality, but the free nation gradually constricting its grip on public discourse has begun its rapid slide into despotism. Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master. - Commissioner Pravin Lal, "U.N. Declaration of Rights"
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Note that if the decision is to move to this paid solution, it will also come with uptime guarantees. I will also make sure that 2 people in the server hosting team receive the contact information to the hosting company so that they can contact him should anything happen to the server and I'm not available, and I will make sure that there are contingencies in place in case anything should happen to me personally.
As the Americans learned so painfully in Earth's final century, free flow of information is the only safeguard against tyranny. The once-chained people whose leaders at last lose their grip on information flow will soon burst with freedom and vitality, but the free nation gradually constricting its grip on public discourse has begun its rapid slide into despotism. Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master. - Commissioner Pravin Lal, "U.N. Declaration of Rights"
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I'll chip in if we do the paid solution
Fear cuts deeper than swords.
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I'll gladly chip in to keep pitbosses going, and I'm eager to join one asap (RTR to answer Krill's question)
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