Running an IT Shop on Shoestring Budget

Once upon a time.....there lived a non-profit organization named The Austin Music Foundation who lived for the sole purpose of helping artists refine their trade. As the organization passes puberty, it needed bigger shoes to handle its growth.

With bigger building facilities above Bookpeople, it's time to feed the IT infrastructure some spinach, or Tech Soup located in the lovely bay area. Techsoup gives non-profits insane discounts on any and all sorts of software.

With any network, here are the core components. In this case 4-port router, a 16 port switch, and a business class cable modem. Bandwidth is donated, Cost - router 40 bucks, switch 80 bucks.

Then there's 'Future', our mighty DNS / File / Exchange / Group Policy / well you get the point server. Donated, running about 800 mhz with a gig of ram. Cost 0$

Then there's our print server 'Firestarter', weighing in at 350 mhz with a whopping 98 megs of ram. Ask and yee shall receive, not one but two new printers to ease a major printer crisis at the foundation. Cost - Donated or dug out of the garbage can .

Next we have our powerhouse box, 'Fuel', boasting a powerful 1.8 gig processor and 512 meggers of ram. Notice the mushrooms, a Robert classic desktop wallpaper when loading a fresh copy of Winders and and MS Office. Cost - Donation

**Note: not pictured are Mr Wireless, and the 'wall of shame 2', a group of haggard computers in the intern room. Duck tape anyone?

Then there was this little thing called an ISP, one in which is packing a punch, Brinkster is what they call it, just flexin' sayin' yea bring it on.

Why flexing? Here's why, currently hosting 9 domain names under the 'developer package.' On top of that, the content management system is written in php with a mysql database, the membership enrollment system written in ASP.net with SQL Server 2000 as a database relying heavy on transaction based stored procedures. Don't forget the old crusty COM+ verisign component in the .net solution, or the personalized digital certificate for 128 bit SSL for keeping all those lovely credit card numbers safe.

Did I mention that the package (haha, package) has 400 pop email accounts at 50 mb each, which measures out to a measly 20 gig. SMTP, well how about support for sending up to 1,000 email messages per day! For our Incubator application, which bands upload their mp3's and such, 5 gigs should do the trick, that is what's included. All that for a grand total of 20 bucks a month!

I like to think of it as a Chevy Nova moving a 3 bedroom house. So go out and tell all your friends that brinkster is a great ISP, and go out and find some of the dorkiest people you know, and tell them to come join the crusade to give better support to the people who support the music.

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"O---O We're half way there!"