NAS-Central Donation Drive 2011

[timtim]

Hi all,
Following on from the end of the last donation drive and to keep a cleaner thread this time I am going to update the balance in this top post from now on. Thanks again to all those of you who have contributed already for making the recent changes happen.

You can still find the Donation Drive 2010 thread in the Announcements Forum.

So far this year we have paid for:

* Bluray media for archiving sites with our new NAS
* A case to store the above media properly

Also we have received the following hardware via donations:

* HP DL385 G7
* 500 GB 7.2k WD SATA disk drive

Currently we are saving for, in order of priority:

* Money for a hosting donation to OSUOSL who host our servers and pay for our power and bandwidth
* One 500 GB disk for our new backup NAS (following a donation of a 500GB disk, we need a matching one)
* Some NAS to go to some people helping out in various places in the forums and wikis
* Hardware for NAS-Central competitions!
* Some money to put away in case of a server related emergency

We carry over the balance at the end of the last donation drive which was £17.98. When donations come in I'll note them below as soon as I am able (typically I update this once every 1-2 weeks).

Click here to get to the paypal donations link

Balance:

• 11/05/2011 - (current) £0.00 - Donation of $50 USD to OSUOSL (£30.90)

• 10/05/2011 - £30.90 - Added one donation of £6.15

• 28/04/2011 - £24.75 - Spent £12.99 on a case for the bluray backup media from Maplins

• 28/04/2011 - £37.74 - Hardware donation of new 500 GB SATA disk for backup box

• 23/04/2011 - £37.74 - Spent £21.87 on 500 GB bluray backup media (20x 25GB) from Amazon

• 23/04/2011 - £59.61 - Added one donation of £7.98 (€10 Euro)

• 13/04/2011 - £51.63 - Added one donation of £11.34 ($20 USD)

• 28/03/2011 - £40.29 - Added one donation of £8.60 ($15 USD)

• 25/03/2011 - £31.69 - Added one donation of £2.75 ($5 USD)

• 22/03/2011 - £28.94 - Added two donations totalling £8.24 ($15 USD)

• 19/03/2011 - £20.70 - Added one donation of £2.72 ($5 USD)

• 14/03/2011 - £17.98 - Carried over from last donation drive

[timtim]

Hi all - a quick update to say our first spend out of this is likely to be for additional hardware for the setup at OSUOSL. This is because whilst the new donated HP server is full of disks, it needs a new RAID controller to access the other half of them. There are other planned upgrades being carried out as well by the NAS-Admin team to the other servers, such as lights out management cards.

Fortunately we are not alone in helping to fund this as other communities that share our resources will also be helping to pay for these changes.

I'll get you a list of what the target/planned spend is as soon as I can!

[timtim]

Attached is a picture of the donated server (yep that's one of ours in the rack at OSUOSL) we are looking to add bits too as part of this donation drive.

Thanks very much to all who donated so far. I will get more info on the actual bits we are looking to fund today if possible!

[timtim]

Here is what we are looking to help fund with the other communities with regards to the upgrades to our servers at OSUOSL:

* Travel to OSUOSL
* Gigabit switch for cluster interconnect
* Gigabit network cards for cluster interconnect
* iLO boards for existing servers
* Extra HP RAID controller for server to support extra disks

It may be that we can find some of the bits between us so I will get us specific requirements for each part before hardware donation offers start coming in!

Otherwise donations via the top post are still the best way to help - thanks for your support!

Cheers

[timtim]

Hi all,
I just raided the pot for the bluray media for archiving our sites and database backups first as I'd like to get working on portal changes. I found a good deal via amazon which is 500 GB of the slower 4x media (20x 25GB discs) for £21.87 including taxes and delivery - which should hopefully last us a while!

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Traxdata-Blu-Ra ... 541&sr=1-2

Have updated the totals above - thanks to everyone continuing to support us with donations!

[timtim]

Hi all,
The bluray media arrived today on 2x 10 disc spindles!

In addition I have donated a 500 GB hard disk I had sitting about for the backup box itself, so we just need to fund one of these from somewhere now not two. Currently this model retails for about £40 GBP so we need to raise that as I plan to also donate a minimum of $50 USD this month to OSUOSL for hosting too, with another $50 USD to follow for this year as soon as we can afford it. We kind of owe OSU as they pay for our power, bandwidth and actually provide tech support too if we are having issues - essentially we are getting a free managed hosting service!

Also I got a hard cd case to pop our archived backups in today to keep them safe. No point in having them if they are scuffed up and unusable! Recent changes added to the top post as per usual.

Thanks!

[timtim]

Hi all - as you can see from the accounts above we donated to OSUOSL last month (they host our servers and pay for our power/bandwidth etc). They sent us a nice thank you letter today - thought I would scan it and post it for you - attached to this post below!

Thanks again!

[kanirasta]

I might be a little dense, but could't find it. How can I donate with Paypal?

Thanks a lot for the great work!

[Mijzelf]

The donations page was broken, but is repaired now:
http://www.nas-central.org/donations