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24-25 Finances

Revision as of 22:11, 12 November 2024 by Rsk (talk | contribs)

This page contains information, plans, and results of club budget requests and purchases for the 2024-2025 school year.

Funding

VTLUUG is currently eligible for:

  • $1,500 from the SBB for the year

We could in the future be eligible for:

  • $500 a semester, more with justification
    • if we become a CS Affiliated Org. This is theoretically possibly doable *right now*, during the Fall '24 semester. Theoretically.
  • $??? from the SEC
    • if we jump through all the required hoops. these seemingly are:
      • attendance to SEC ~3 meetings a semester
      • >=3 hours of community service via the SEC in a *previous* semester
      • signing up for some stuff

Proposed Purchases

For each of the following, use this format.

  • $PRICE <item name> (<person interested in buying it>)
    • reason for proposed purchase
    • link to a store page or quote with the price

these are just ideas, don't feel shy about putting something with a wacky price tag down

Possible Setup 1 (this is just to test the waters) Ill have better ones There will be many possible builds depending on what other hardware people want to use or have (technically I am sleeping rn but this build was on my mind)

  • $179 ASUS Prime Z490-P LGA 1200 (Intel® 10th Gen) ATX Motherboard (daddykeystroke)
    • I am ASUS enjoyer (People say they changed with the logo I have not noticed quality drop myself). Cheap, effective, works with 10th gen intel. (ONLY 2 PCIE 16 slots) this is never enough and the p100 faces the wrong way if I remember right.
    • https://www.amazon.com/ASUS-Prime-Z490-P/dp/B07ZT3F95V


  • $152 8x500GB 2.5" for the proliant (rsk)

Budget Requests

bundling items together into groups with decent purchasing justification

  • server upkeep/parts
    • $80 proliant caddies: $10 each, eight bays in the box. we can buy all eight, scrounging for drives is easier than for caddies.
    • 2.5" SAS drives. two in raid1 is enough for now.
  • AI rig
  • backup & storage solution
    • title:
      • A Backup/Storage solution for VTLUUG services and members
    • desc:
      • We host several services for members and the general public, one of which is official reference material for Virginia Tech IT. Due to hardware failure and a lack of resources for the past few years, we no longer have the materials for an adequate backup solution to keep these services running: our purchase of hard drives here aims to rectify that.
    • mission:
      • The Linux and Unix Users Group at Virginia Tech (VTLUUG) is dedicated to improving the computing skills of its members, supporting Linux and Unix use on campus, and serving the community through Free Software and open data. We host various services for on-campus students and members, including DNS adblocking, Linux shell servers, storage, password management, and more. Some of our services, like our wiki, are used by Virginia Tech IT Personnel.
    • storage:
      • The Whittemore Server Closet, administrated by the ECE IT director, Bruce Buskill (bbuskill@vt.edu).
    • why/how:
      • The new hard drives will go in one of our existing servers, building a storage array with a complete size of over 100 Terabytes (allowing for several drive failures without data loss). Getting this amount of storage from a cloud service provider like BackBlaze B2 would cost on the order of $660 a month, every month that we want to retain our data. In comparison, doing it ourselves provides a valauble oppurtunity for club members to learn system and data administration, and in essence pays itself back within a single month. Once the storage array is built, members of the club will be able to upload and download from it at will, as well as apportion parts of it for their personal projects, and we can set up automated backups for our service data, to ensure that there is never significant downtime due to data loss.
    • items
      • 8x MDD 16TB 3.5inch Internal Enterprise Hard Drive
Renewed Hard Drives, at a per-drive cost of $110 for 16TB, coming out to a low $6.874 per-TB, currently the lowest on the market per https://diskprices.com

the other lowest drives listed on that site that are Amazon Renewed (somewhat more reputable than a random used seller) are:
$7.785 / TB: https://vtluug.org/users/~rsk/files/14tb.png
$7.679 / TB: https://vtluug.org/users/~rsk/files/12tb.png
and
$7.785 / TB: https://vtluug.org/users/~rsk/files/14_2.png

here is the listing page for the drives we our buying:
https://vtluug.org/users/~rsk/files/16tb.png
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