Our main web server machine became inoperative this morning. We have migrated web service to another machine.

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Thanks Jeff, and good on the ones who fix the broken bits. You keep us together.

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"Sour Grapes make a bitter Whine." <(0)>

Is there any reason you haven't moved everything over to Amazon AWS servers? My entire company sits on there and we can do some pretty amazing things and it's very cost effective.

Is there any reason you haven't moved everything over to Amazon AWS servers? My entire company sits on there and we can do some pretty amazing things and it's very cost effective.

As I recall, this has been asked several times in the past, and the answers were:
1) This is a University research project.. For reasons of data security and scientific integrity, the project will remain on university-controlled computers, and
2) This is a low-budget (shoe-string, volunteer-funded) project, and the money isn't there to move to a commercial cloud service, even if 1) did notr apply.

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Donald
Infernal Optimist / Submariner, retired

Has anyone actually calculated the costs? http://s3.amazonaws.com/calculator/index.html I wouldn't know what to put in.

As for security how would AWS be any less secure. We process around $120 million dollars using this service...again I have no IT background. I am happy to look into this more if it would helps. AWS is supposed to be more cost effective than using a home box.

First shot, based on the current server models and data transfers - in excess of $50k per month, and that excludes the storage size!!!!

As Donald said - cost (I understand SETI@Home's annual budget is about $150k, and most of that goes on salaries.)

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Bob Smith
Member of Seti PIPPS (Pluto is a Planet Protest Society)
Somewhere in the (un)known Universe?

SETI@home Budget - Winter 2011
Project/Task Subtotals Total
SETI@home 166,200
Database normalization (in order to co-analyze multiple project data sets) 10,000
NTPCker development
Candidate production code - $20000
Scoring - $10000
Presentation (web development for both internal/external purposes) - $10000 40,000
RFI rejection (algorithms, analysis, implementation) 20,000
Multiple frequency observing (requires client and backend modifications) 30,000
Continued radar blanking development 30,000
Client maintenance/development 30,000
Preparation for followup observations 6,200

Astropulse 60,000
Continued maintenance 10,000
Further development 20,000
Data analysis 30,000

Systems/Day-to-day operations 250,000
Internet bandwidth (monthly costs and improvements) 40,000
Database administration and support 60,000
Systems administration and support 120,000
Server maintenance and performance monitoring 20,000
Web site development/maintenance 10,000

Total: $476,200

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Thanks - my memory was only the headline figure for SETI - and even that was low.
So we are talking about S@H's total being $500k, or about $42k per month - and most of those costs are staff costs, not "hardware". A quick look suggests that the only area for savings by transferring the database to Amazon's care would be in the last block of $250k, and even then there are a lot of costs that would still be needed for staff at Berkeley, my first guess would be that only half of the $250k could be offset against the Amazon charges - say $125k (or slightly over $10k per month).
So pay $50k per month to Amazon and still have to spend $32k per month means a total expenditure of $82k per month against $42k per month - that's not a saving that is nearly doubling the budget......

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Bob Smith
Member of Seti PIPPS (Pluto is a Planet Protest Society)
Somewhere in the (un)known Universe?

SETI@home was started with the idea of exploiting "unused cycles" on PCs. Then it generated BOINC, and the paradigm of distributed volunteer computing took off, with Einstein@home discovering new pulsars, both in the radio and the gamma-ray ranges. The computing power of ATLAS@home (ATLAS is a big CERN particle experiment) rivals that of the CERN GRID. So taking our computations to Amazon or IBM or Google clouds would be a step backwards.
Tullio

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SETI@home was started with the idea of exploiting "unused cycles" on PCs. Then it generated BOINC, and the paradigm of distributed volunteer computing took off, with Einstein@home discovering new pulsars, both in the radio and the gamma-ray ranges. The computing power of ATLAS@home (ATLAS is a big CERN particle experiment) rivals that of the CERN GRID. So taking our computations to Amazon or IBM or Google clouds would be a step backwards.
Tullio

Tullio, I read his question as about moving the Seti@Home project server functions to Amazon or Google Cloud, rather than the actual crunching that we do.

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Donald
Infernal Optimist / Submariner, retired

I think you are right, but that would be only a part of SETI@home and it would drain all the money SETI has, with no money for development and other tasks. SETI@home works on a shoestring budget, with little financing except by volunteers like us.
Tullio

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I think you are right, but that would be only a part of SETI@home and it would drain all the money SETI has, with no money for development and other tasks. SETI@home works on a shoestring budget, with little financing except by volunteers like us.
Tullio

Exactly the points we've made.

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Donald
Infernal Optimist / Submariner, retired

It's dimes and nickels, nickels and dimes..."All my sons" by Arthur Miller, a Greek tragedy written in Midwestern English.
Tullio

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I guess the work server is out too? I have a 2nd computer dedicated to SETI@home and it hasn't uploaded completed work in about a week, just get Communication Deferred in the status. any idea when that'll be back up?
Thanks[/quote]

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I guess the work server is out too? I have a 2nd computer dedicated to SETI@home and it hasn't uploaded completed work in about a week, just get Communication Deferred in the status. any idea when that'll be back up?
Thanks

The place to address that issue is the Number Crunching section of the Forums, or the Q & A area..

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Donald
Infernal Optimist / Submariner, retired

Thanks for the heads up, I was wondering why I wasn't getting any work. I look forward to new work real soon. Have a great day and upcoming weekend.

Dr. Spencer
Astronomer Emeritus
People's Republic of Taxachusetts

The web server issue occurred on the 19th of February, and had no effect on the availability of work.

You might want to check your system to see what the issue is.
If you can't sort it out, I'd suggest un-hiding your computers & posting in the Number Crunching or Question and Answers forums for assistance.

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Grant
Darwin NT

so you have no units for this time?

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There are no SETI@home v7 or AstroPulse workunits as of this moment, but there's plenty of SETI@home v8. You should get version 8 automatically unless you're using a third-party program and haven't updated, or you haven't selected v8 in your preferences.

Amazon has a poor reputation for security in its cloud computing services. See https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2014/01/16/amazon-is-a-hornets-nest-of-malware/ for how it became a top malware and botnet host in 2014. See https://www.spamhaus.org/sbl/listings/amazon.com for a list of spammers, phishing sites, and Angler Exploit Kit redirectors that it hosts. (The Angler Exploit Kit is malware used to install other criminals' malware on victim computers as a service.) Amazon apparently does not ask enough questions on what its cloud computing customers are doing. This shows that Amazon's cloud computing services probably cannot be trusted if security is a top priority.