Hi all I agree with Brooke, the cloud is just someone else's computer. With all the advantages and disadvantages that brings. Chris On 10 December 2014 7:06:37 am NZDT, BWS Johnson <abesottedphoenix@yahoo.com> wrote:
Salve!
I have a question about installation of Koha.
Relative to hosting Koha in the cloud as opposed to on our own local servers on our domain (which I assume most people do), what is the thinking about the ease of installing and updating if it is hosted "externally" versus on our own servers?
As long as you have access to the command line and can update and change things at will, then there is no difference between the cloud and a physical local server. That latter bit seems to be a big problem with a lot of companies, though. So choose a service provider with great care and after a lot of testing. You not only needs be able to update Koha, but all of Koha's dependencies as well.
Are there any security issues I should be concerned about in either
case?
The only difference I can spot might actually weigh as a positive in favour of cloud based service. When you have a physical server and suffer a local catastrophe, such as an earthquake, fire, sinkhole, et cetera, there goes your data. If you found a cloud based service that allows you to maintain things routinely, there shouldn't be any difference. You're trusting someone else when you select a hosted service, but this would be the same trust you would put in a normal vendor in most cases, anyway. If you hire a new employee for your building and give them a set of keys, you're taking a security risk, too, but in both cases that risk ought be calculated.
Security issues in general are shared over a specific listserv that's populated by trusted Community members. Bugs on that list are fixed with extreme prejudice.
My final note is to consider if you're going to actually *need* the data that you collect and keep. A certain naughty Library that shall remain nameless used to keep the Social Security Numbers of all of their Patrons in a note field on a non Koha system that would literally pop up *every* time someone checked out.
Cheers, Brooke _______________________________________________ Koha mailing list http://koha-community.org Koha@lists.katipo.co.nz http://lists.katipo.co.nz/mailman/listinfo/koha
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