We are exploring ways to help non-profits and small businesses meet their computing and content delivery needs by using open systems software and cloud computing infrastructure.

This web site is being developed using the free and open Drupal content management system.

It runs on a Debian Linux system.

This site is currently served from a small server in a home office. In the next few days, we will migrate it to a "cloud" server.

Our home office is down a gravel road somewhere in rural Orange County, North Carolina.

Power isn't that reliable. Upstream bandwidth is limited. We don't need the heat, noise, and additional utility cost at home. An ice storm could take this site down for days.

We need the flexibility of a dedicated machine. We need to be able to choose what software is installed, determine what services are actually running, etc. without worrying about external effects on other users, or their effects on us.

We need the ability to quickly deploy a parallel test or staging server when we need it, and then destroy it when it is no longer useful. We want to start with a small server, but need to be able to migrate our system to a larger server or to a cluster of servers if load warrants. And then move back to a smaller system as appropriate.

Using dedicated hosts is beyond our budget and won't give us the deployment flexibility and agility that we require. We want to avoid the capacity planning dilemma wherein one either pays for more infrastructure than one needs, or one undersizes and pays in another way.

We'll log this migration as we go. Stay tuned!