[Labs-l] open grid on bots

Mon Mar 11 19:09:37 UTC 2013

Petr Bena <benapetr at gmail.com> wrote:

> But I still fail to see why you believe that cluster operated and
> maintained by volunteer sysadmins should be less stable than cluster
> maintained by paid wmf staff. Not all volunteers are that dumb to
> randomly break everything.

I have yet to see Marc assert that only paid WMF staff can
admin Tool Labs; I think he put emphasis on the point that
(any) admin work just has to be very disciplined on Tool
Labs so to provide a reliable infrastructure (and I second
that).

> I would myself rather host my bots on a cluster where I can easily set
> it up and have constant support anytime I need, rather than some
> cluster which is mostly only "self-maintained" in the means that users
> can't change anything but the tool itself, and for anything which
> requires sysadmin attention (there will be lot of needs for that) will
> have to wait for ages - just as they have to on tool server now.

> [...]

Toolserver has one (I believe (very) part-time) paid and one
volunteer admin (who also live in the same time zone).  I
don't think it's fair to compare this to the Tool Labs where
the "Tools Lab Operations Engineer" (*1) alone works
40 h/week.

Also, what surprised me (and so I understand Marc's initial
"Err, guys, duplication of efforts?") is the secrecy in
which you set up the grid on Bots.  When you have someone
knowledgeable around, it's not only unnecessary work not to
draw on the experiences (= failures) he already made, it
also has a very bad vibe as it looks as if there is some
distrust.

Tim

(*1)   "Tool*s* Lab"!  If it weren't that late in the game,
       we should use some other (one-word) name.
       "Toolzilla".  "Toolit".  "Xanadu".