I've never understood why people do stuff like this. Years ago I recovered data from a CFO's laptop, only to find the thing filled with porn. Senior managers generally make enough money to have personal devices to look at porn on -- why do they risk the embarrassment of being discovered misusing company resources? I guess now that I think of it, the CFO in question wasn't fired (or even really disciplined) for this, as far as I can tell, so maybe senior managers just think that they're important enough that rules and common sense don't matter. If the laptop had belonged to a lower-level employee, he or she probably would have been disciplined.

Familiar or not, IOS ps pretty cludgy and difficult to navigate, and lacks a lot of basic tools that are available at a bash shell. For example, why can't I pipe muptiple 'include' statements together yet? I've been able to pipe multiple grep statements together since, well, since I started using Linux at least 13-14 years ago.

As much as I would like to see Linux / BSD being used to power network devices (and I admit that it's already happening), it's going to be a long time before most enterprises ditch their Cisco gear for equipment that runs an open source OS. Many large enterprises have already made significant investments in hardware and personnel. Even if a vendor were to come along with an excellent product at a great price point it would probably be at least 5-10 years before most enterprises move away from their Cisco switches, routers and other appliances. Don't get me wrong -- I'd like to see Cisco's dominance challenged, and to see a Linux / BSD based CLI used to configure network equipment instead of IOS -- but it seems unlikely in the near future.

I feel bad for the programmers and sysadmins that are being asked to implement this. Surely, they must know that it won't work, but senior management probably insists that everyone can afford all the content they want, and that DRM is easy to deal with (and somehow beneficial) because senior management is completely lost.

The front line people responsible for setting this up are probably rolling their eyes in disgust, and looking for better jobs. If I were in their position, I would be. Have fun trying to enforce something that is unworkable and unrealistic. When you're not having fun anymore, hopefully you'll find a job that uses your skillset to do something that makes sense.

Goldman Sachs wasn't equipped to host their own repository? For code that is supposedly proprietary, valuable and highly sensitive? That's pretty shocking. Either this guy violated company policy by using a free repo host when he was explicitly told not to, or whoever is responsible for IT infrastructure at Goldman should be fired for incompetence. Hosting your own repo is easy enough, and trusting a free repo host for sensitive code is about as stupid as using a pastebin to share medical records.

$45?!? That same plan costs me $60 in western PA! And I thought I was getting a good deal :(

As others have pointed out, you've missed a few details. So, you're getting 503's -- do you know why? Is processor or disk load too high? Is your server misconfigured? I'm guessing at this point that your host is managed by a third party -- have you asked them to explain the problems you're having? Have they offered a solution (even if it might cost you more money)?

What is your budget? What are you currently paying? What about your level of in-house experience? If you're a linux / unix admin (or have one at your disposal) you might be best served by using either a managed VPS or colocated server (or a couple, behind a load balancer, but that gets to be more expensive and complicated to set up).

If you're less willing or able to manage hosting yourself, be aware that generally, you'll get better service from managed hosting providers if you're willing to spend money. Even though you're a non-profit, probably with a limited budget, you shouldn't skimp on hosting if you decide that a managed host is right for you. If you typically have ~1000 active users on your site, any downtime will hurt you -- even if it doesn't cost you in terms of donations, it will make you seem less legitimate.

Anyway, here are your options:

Unmanaged VPS -- cheapest option, will require some technical expertise on your end. Potentially less reliable than colocated servers.
Colocation -- Can be expensive, requires a fair amount of technical expertise. If configured properly, your site should be very, very reliable, but there's a lot of room for error.
Managed hosting -- Forget about paying $80/year for managed hosting, considering the amount of traffic you're getting. You may have to spend $100/month or more. Good managed hosting won't require much experience from you or your staff, and will be less expensive (probably) than colocating multiple servers. Do research, read reviews, etc. to find a provider you feel comfortable with. While price is an important consideration, you shouldn't go with the cheapest option just because it's the cheapest. If you need to talk to a technician at 3am, you want to be sure that you're going to get someone on the phone when you call. It's also probably important that the person you get when you call during an outage / emergency isn't an idiot, and with most bargain-basement hosts, you're lucky to get a human on the phone at all.

Good luck :)

I really have no interest in just uploading or downloading files through my browser. When this was announced I heard that they were going to support mounting / folder syncing, but I'm not seeing anything like that yet. Am I missing something?