Anyone interested in a remote hosting for BrickSync?

enig

I currently have my laptop running round the clock for BrickSync and some other services, that need to be running 24/7. However, laptop components are not exactly designed with 24/7 in mind, so this is a little less than perfect.

Would there be anyone interested in hosting their BrickSync remotely, for a (very) symbolic charge?

I have some old machines laying around that I could use for this (or maybe would just get smth new for the sake of reliability). Would shove an SSD into it, dedicated strictly for running the OS and BrickSync distributions only. Also thinking of upgrading my fiber from 100/100 to 1Gpbs, or to 300/300 at the very least.

Not interested in making a dime out of this, just recouping a part of the monthly costs.

In a nutshell:

* You would not need to have your machine running 24/7 any more, all year round. Not sure how much power costs at your neck of the woods, but here a 150-200W desktop eats up 150-200 EUR worth of electricity per year.
* Your own copy of BrickSync, that no one else has access to
* Daily double backups - on a separate drive locally and to a remote cloud storage. Could be done more often (hourly?) if deemed necessary
* Hosted on a fast and very reliable fiber connection with unlimited bandwidth

Price - 1 EUR per month? If there would be ~20 users interested in this, it is totally enough to cover the running costs. If more, then it would also help with getting a new hardware, but I think even 20 is probably a little optimistic

Risks?
* Power outage. But then again it's the exact same risk of that happening at your home. It tends to happen once every few months but I do not ever remember it lasting more than a couple hours MAX. To add, BrickSync is also created to deal with such things - it will pick things up from where they were left.
* Well I guess you'd also have to trust me, that I am not up to something devious! The "no one else has access to" part does not, in a way, extend to system admin.

Please post here or PM me if you are interested, got any questions or maybe are NOT interested for one reason or another.

Before anyone asks - at this point it's just an idea. I do not know what exact OS would be running on the machine, nor how exactly it would be configured for remote user access.

I also have a question for @Stragus and @Lawrence - do you see any potential issues, with multiple users running BS / accessing BL + BO via API from the same IP?

Lukas

Colorado Bricks

Not sure about BO, but I think that you will run in the max BL API per IP call if you run it for too many store.

enig

Is the API call count API-key based, or IP based?

In any case, this would not be done without full knowledge and agreement of BL and BO. Even if the API calls are IP based, I think it would not be impossible to reach an agreement with BL regarding this. After all, we would be saving trees and all that

What else can be a problem - in the past, I think I had issues when trying to perform a Sync when I traveled abroad and took the laptop with me. That's why I am interested to hear from Alexis and Lawrence about this.

carlptaylor

In this age of cloud computing would it not be a better choice to create a service in which shops could manage this process without the need for anything on a pc, some configuation in a page somewhere is all thats required, pushing the service into the cloud to manage the end to end processes for a fee, manages minimal downtime, scalability, etc. with 2000plus bo shops at present I'm sure a number would pay for a service to take the pain away from learning to use any synching software, using their time to manage stock and other more enjoyable things.

leopard37

Carl are you offering to make a web gui for bricksync?

enig

@carlptaylor I guess both yes and no. Even if you run the service remotely, it still needs user input whenever you change something in your inventory. But there really are just two essential commands that you need to "learn" once you have it up and running - blmaster on/off. Not too painful.

Could it be 100% independent and do the job without any user input at all? I don't think so, unless you'd manage any and all your inventory editing entirely and exclusively on that third party platform only. Otherwise - how would it know, that you have just changed the price something from $0.05 to $0.04

Looking from my perspective - I personally would not be interested in a remote service anyway. I still need to have a computer running 24/7 at my place - hosting BrickSync makes no difference.

Stability, downtime - not a concern for me either. Power outages are extremely rare and short, ISP is no-trouble. All in all the uptime is close to 99.9% at worst, having in mind my connection/power issues during past year.

I'll rather have it running at my place for free, versus somewhere else that costs money. Even if it's just a few EUR per month, at the end of the year it does sum up and I'll rather use that money for something else.

How many would pay for what you're suggesting? Well, let's see how many are interested in what I am offering - maybe it will be a good catalyst to answer your question

As I see it - it should make sense for medium to large sized shops, who are A) getting enough orders to not wanting to risk a double-order plus are maybe not large enough where having to run a desktop all year round is worth extra 75/100 EUR (say it would be off 50% of the time otherwsie). If you sell for, say, 3000 EUR per year extra with the help of BO, then 100 EUR in extra expenses takes up more than 3% of that money. As bad as PayPal! If you sell for less, then it's even worse.

BrickGenie

To be honest I would be too worried about safety issues, even if you're not up to something malicious a single machine hosting multiple versions of BrickSync would be a nice target.

Also not sure if it wouldn't violate the BL api rules regarding the non-profit part.

enig

To be honest I would be too worried about safety issues, even if you're not up to something malicious a single machine hosting multiple versions of BrickSync would be a nice target.

Fair point. Haven't really thought about someone wanting to cause harm with this. Would seem like a lot of trouble just to harm a few people, but if someone really wants to screw someone over then I guess nothing that's connected to internet is really safe

Also not sure if it wouldn't violate the BL api rules regarding the non-profit part.

Well as I said - this would not be done without BL being fully aware. But I chose to start asking around from this end rather than the other If there is no one interested, not really worth asking BL if this would be alright.

JayB-SoCal

You would have to allow remote login and then jail the shell, otherwise you get one bad cookie who tramples on everyone else's BrickSync install which they might depend on heavily. I have no idea about the API rules, but if you do the BrickSync part for free and charge for other aspects (backup, some kind of simple interface) then that doesn't seem like it would be a problem - but piggy-backing multiple API keys on a single IP would probably cause headaches for those people.

carlptaylor

@leopard37, I wish there was something I could just plug 2 api values into to view/manage everything online between the 2 sites.

personally i would manage my stock via BO, BL would be updated accordingly, purchases in BL would update the BO stock

hopefully the people who wrote bricksync can maybe look to move the solution they have on each machine to a service they can provide in the cloud.

iketart

Would be a awful pain to ask you to turn BL master off when I wanted to add parts ect or update my inventory.

unbrickable

good idea ! but I will hesitate to use it until software is build very good, testing logs are available (changelogs etc) and multiple security checks are in place with backups on offsite locations

enig

@JayB-SoCal - of course. Each user would have a separate login and unable to mess with anyone else's BrickSync. Just not yet sure whether it'd be a separate VPS for each user, a separate user accounts on a single distribution of OS, or yet some other solution. As far as for-profit situation - I am only interested in a small compensation for the running costs, and that's exactly what I would be charging for.

@iketart - you would be able to do it all on your own

I guess at this point it's time to ask what BL thinks about this, and whether multiple user API calls coming from the same IP would cause any issues. Will update once I hear back.

Stragus

You should check the terms of service for BL's API, they had something about not sharing data with a third party... My interpretation at the time was that you could access the API on your own computer, but that didn't cover granting API access to some remote/cloud service. I could be wrong though.

And potential IP bans may be an issue. I know people who have faced 24 hours temporary bans (they were perhaps abusing a little, like initializing BrickSync from scratch a couple times in a row, or fetching API price information for 10k lots).

Gbone

I'm somewhat interested and would like to have alittle more info on it.