Repository services and budget

[Dave Crocker <dcrocker@imc.org>]

>And its not a $200,000 contract.  You'll burn that just keeping the
>appropriate network connectivity going for something of this importance.

	Actually, this is probably worth discussing in some detail, as
"pre-work" for CORE:  What is a legitimate basis for a repository
operations sub-contract?  What are the services that should be contracted
for and how much should it cost?

	I assume the services are 2-3 instances of a distributed db server,
with support sufficient to ensure high reliability and recovery from
problems.  Probably should include some template development for db access
and probably assorted other components of client (registrar) configuration
support.  What else?

	If the above is anywhere in the ballpark, here are some guesses
about costs, with capital costs figured as straight expenses (not good
bookeeping, but life somehow makes these amounts of capital expenses recur):


    3    PC Servers, heavily loaded @ $10K/machine	     US$ 30,000

	 Server software					 30,000

    3    Co-located Internet attachments @ 12K/yr/machine	 36,000

	 Supplies (tape, paper, etc.)				 10,000

    2	 Staff, 2 full-time equivalent				300,000

         Travel							 30,000

    2	 Workstations @ $8K/machine w/software			 16,000

	 Office space						 20,000

	 Telephone, utilities, etc.				 25,000

						    TOTAL:  US$ 497,000


	This can possibly be cut in half.

	I doubt that a fulltime staff of two is really necessary.  I
suspect that the co-location fees can be lower, possibly also the office
and utilities, though i'd expect the phone bill to be pretty high.  Travel
will either be much higher or much lower...  On the other hand, I left out
the DNS servers, which must run on separate machines and will no doubt be
quite active.  Don't know whether they CAN be a Wesson-esque 3 linux boxes,
but maybe.

	Anyhow, thought it might be useful to try for some concrete numbers.

d/

ps.  The purpose of the above is not to assert that these numbers are
"right" and, therefore, it won't help for someone to say they are "wrong".
The purpose of the above is to initiate a discussion about a reasonable and
acceptable set of services from the repository and to define the budget it
ought to need to accomplish it.  Hence, helpful responses will tend to be
of the form "item x needs to be (choose one) higher/lower and should
actually be US$nnn", as well as "add an item for X at US$nnn".


(read the last line, please)
----------------------------
Dave Crocker, Director                                       +1 408 246 8253
Internet Mail Consortium                                 (f) +1 408 249 6205
127 Segré Place                                             dcrocker@imc.org
Santa Cruz, CA  95060 USA                                 http://www.imc.org

Also:  IAHC member, expressing strictly (or loosely) personal opinions