I wonder if there would be interest out there for a ready-made koha VM appliance, available for customers of the main computing clouds (Amazon, Microsoft, et al). It came to me that in order for a library to cater for a circulation of over 10 million transactions, it would have to service a lot of branches, be equally accessible by all as far as throughput is concerned, and be able to gracefully handle transient loads. I use koha myself, running as a VM running on Oracle VM Virtualbox, but this is hardly scalable. A cloud implementation seems to fit the bill. n fact it could be a godsend for small libraries that can't invest even in the smaller koha local set-up. Perhaps someone could even "sell" his/her expertise in setting-up koha and supporting libraries under this scheme. The software may be open and free, the know-how is not. So, has anyone tried it so far? Kind regards, Manos PETRIDIS Athens , Greece
Manos PETRIDIS schrieb am 08.08.2013
n fact it could be a godsend for small libraries that can't invest even in the smaller koha local set-up. Perhaps someone could even "sell" his/her expertise in setting-up koha and supporting libraries under this scheme. The software may be open and free, the know-how is not.
Lots of people "sell" their expertise. That is the way business is done with free software. We even have a whole website of Koha support providers. Most people developing Koha are part of Koha support companies. I am sure there are way more libraries using a hosted version of Koha than run it on their own servers. You may be a bit late with that idea. ;) -- Mirko
I know "I'm late with the idea", I do follow the list :-) What I asked was if there are koha implementations on the major clouds out there (Amazon, Microsoft etc.), ready-made for their customer to use. Therefore, the library is a customer of the cloud provider, and seeks only consultation from Koha support providers. Quite a different business scenario, as neither the Koha consultant nor the customer need to have their own infrastructure in order to have a large/scalable Koha installation. Unless of course Amazon and Microsoft are already on the Koha support provider list, and I'm simply not up-to-date. Manos -----Original Message----- From: koha-bounces@lists.katipo.co.nz [mailto:koha-bounces@lists.katipo.co.nz] On Behalf Of Mirko Sent: Thursday, August 08, 2013 11:44 PM To: koha@lists.katipo.co.nz Subject: Re: [Koha] koha as a ready-made VM appliance? Manos PETRIDIS schrieb am 08.08.2013
n fact it could be a godsend for small libraries that can't invest even in the smaller koha local set-up. Perhaps someone could even "sell" his/her expertise in setting-up koha and supporting libraries under this scheme. The software may be open and free, the know-how is not.
Lots of people "sell" their expertise. That is the way business is done with free software. We even have a whole website of Koha support providers. Most people developing Koha are part of Koha support companies. I am sure there are way more libraries using a hosted version of Koha than run it on their own servers. You may be a bit late with that idea. ;) -- Mirko _______________________________________________ Koha mailing list http://koha-community.org Koha@lists.katipo.co.nz http://lists.katipo.co.nz/mailman/listinfo/koha
On 09/08/13 08:07, Manos PETRIDIS wrote:
What I asked was if there are koha implementations on the major clouds out there (Amazon, Microsoft etc.), ready-made for their customer to use.
I'm sure I remember an Amazon image being demonstrated at the kohacon10 hackfest but I just failed to find details online.
Therefore, the library is a customer of the cloud provider, and seeks only consultation from Koha support providers. Quite a different business scenario, as neither the Koha consultant nor the customer need to have their own infrastructure in order to have a large/scalable Koha installation.
A very different business scenario, where both parties are trusting the cloud provider very heavily and probably paying them a fair whack. If you actually need that scalability, I suspect it's better value for money to pay a Koha support provider to create a customised image for one of the private clouds which comes with rather - errrm, how to phrase this? - closer, less scripted support from its provider. The co-op is open to consulting for such libraries, but I fear problems could take longer to track down, as Amazon isn't as well documented or tested as the more common platforms. Hope that explains, -- MJ Ray (slef), member of www.software.coop, a for-more-than-profit co-op http://koha-community.org supporter, web and library systems developer. In My Opinion Only: see http://mjr.towers.org.uk/email.html Available for hire (including development) at http://www.software.coop/
On 09/08/13 08:07, Manos PETRIDIS wrote:
What I asked was if there are koha implementations on the major clouds out there (Amazon, Microsoft etc.), ready-made for their customer to use.
I'm sure I remember an Amazon image being demonstrated at the kohacon10 hackfest but I just failed to find details online.
Therefore, the library is a customer of the cloud provider, and seeks only consultation from Koha support providers. Quite a different business scenario, as neither the Koha consultant nor the customer need to have their own infrastructure in order to have a large/scalable Koha installation.
A very different business scenario, where both parties are trusting the cloud provider very heavily and probably paying them a fair whack. > If you actually need that scalability, I suspect it's better value for money to pay a Koha support provider to create a customised image for > one of the
-----Original Message----- From: koha-bounces@lists.katipo.co.nz [mailto:koha-bounces@lists.katipo.co.nz] On Behalf Of MJ Ray Sent: Friday, August 09, 2013 12:18 PM To: koha@lists.katipo.co.nz Subject: Re: [Koha] koha as a ready-made VM appliance? private clouds which comes with rather - errrm, how to phrase this? - closer, less scripted support from its provider.
The co-op is open to consulting for such libraries, but I fear problems
could take longer to track down, as Amazon isn't as well documented > or tested as the more common platforms.
Hope that explains,
It certainly does! I don't have any such need myself as I only use koha to document my own personal library, it's just that I read about really large circulations and I wondered under what scenaria such a need would arise (large number of geographically dispersed libraries for example) and how I would begin handling it myself, if I had to (I'm an IT professional). best regards, Manos Petridis
-- MJ Ray (slef), member of www.software.coop, a for-more-than-profit co-op http://koha-community.org supporter, web and library systems developer. In My Opinion Only: see http://mjr.towers.org.uk/email.html Available for hire (including development) at http://www.software.coop/
Koha mailing list http://koha-community.org Koha@lists.katipo.co.nz http://lists.katipo.co.nz/mailman/listinfo/koha
participants (3)
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Manos PETRIDIS -
Mirko -
MJ Ray