Notes from Oregon State University Open Source Lab

Many Open Source projects grow too large for free services such as Google Code Project Hosting and SourceForge.net, or simply have infrastructure needs that cannot be met by those services. Where can projects turn if they need a stable hosting environment but can't get by with the offerings available at other free hosting providers? Many projects turn to the Oregon State University Open Source Lab (OSUOSL). The OSUOSL hosts many of the world's most well-known Open Source projects and foundations, including Drupal, the Linux Foundation, the Apache Software Foundation, and many more.

Google, through its Open Source Programs Office, has been one of the strongest supporters of the OSUOSL by providing multiple large donations which help the OSUOSL provide world-class hosting to many Open Source projects. With these contributions, the OSUOSL has been able to expand its data center and provide jobs for many student system administrators. Student employees at the Lab work closely with hosted projects to setup, maintain, and optimize hosted services. OSUOSL is able to provide system administration services and expertise so that projects don't need to worry about the trouble of running a server and can instead dedicate time to improving their open source project.

Snapshot taken from http://larch.osuosl.org/ftpmap/

Over the last year, thanks to funding from Google and other supporters, the OSUOSL has been able to expand many of its services

• The three OSUOSL FTP mirrors have been upgraded, and space doubled to 6TB per server


• The data center in Corvallis, OR has expanded in size to allow for future growth


• Data center power and cooling have both been increased to meet future demand

All of these improvements have allowed the OSUOSL to take on new hosted partners including Cacti, Fedora, OpenMRS, Parrot, RPM, and Sugar Labs. To continue to provide such a world-class hosting infrastructure for Open Source projects, the OSUOSL needs your help. For more information on OSUOSL donation programs and to find out how you can help support the Open Source Lab, please see http://osuosl.org/donate.

By Jeff Sheltren, Operations Manager, OSUOSL