Move DNS for TDWG.org to a cloud provider

[MattBlissett]

Hi,

We're planning on moving the DNS for GBIF.org (and our other domains) to a cloud provider, probably Amazon Route 53. This should provide faster DNS lookups since Amazon have servers around the world, and simplify maintenance — upgrading DNS server software is a chore.

Can we do the same with TDWG.org?

[stanblum]

Yes, I think that would be fine with us. Would there be a cost associated with that, or is it small enough that it would not be worth the hassle to share it?

Also, please note that I think my former institution (calacademy.org) was running a GBIFDNSmirror on their stack of virtual servers. We should tell them that this can be decommissioned, if/when that happens.

On Wed, Feb 24, 2016 at 5:30 AM, Matt Blissett notifications@github.com wrote:

Hi,

We're planning on moving the DNS for GBIF.org (and our other domains) to a cloud provider, probably Amazon Route 53. This should provide faster DNS lookups since Amazon have servers around the world, and simplify maintenance — upgrading DNS server software is a chore.

Can we do the same with TDWG.org?

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/tdwg/infrastructure/issues/67.

[MattBlissett]

Thanks. I think the cost is so small it won't be worth the administration, we expect it to be something like $6 per year.

The Natural History Museum (London) is hosting a DNS mirror for TDWG. I'll let them know once we've moved and thoroughly tested everything.

(Calacademy.org is already using Amazon DNS. How's that for a recommendation? :-) )

[MattBlissett]

Hi Stan,

We've moved GBIF.org's DNS to Amazon, and all looks to be working fine. It's much faster for users outside Europe, and a little faster for users in Europe but not in Denmark.

Since you are the technical administrator for the tdwg.org domain, please could you update the name servers as follows:

ns-1521.awsdns-62.org.
ns-2002.awsdns-58.co.uk.
ns-112.awsdns-14.com.
ns-954.awsdns-55.net.

If you let me know when it's done, I'll check everything is working correctly. I don't expect any interruption of service; we had no issues moving GBIF.org.

Thanks.

[stanblum]

Hi Matt,

I've entered the addresses above as our DNS servers for tdwg.org.

We also have "LSID.info" as a domain name we serve. It is currently (not changed yet) pointing to the same servers we had used for tdwg.org; i.e., NS.TDWG.GBIF.ORG and MAILSERVER.NHM.AC.UK. Do you still have entries for that in your DNS? and can I go ahead and update the DNS servers for LSID.info?

[mdoering]

If we want to server the lsid domain still the tdwg apache virtual host must be reactivated and fixed, see #60

[stanblum]

Did you see Rod Page's tweet yesterday:

Roderic Page ‏@rdmpage https://twitter.com/rdmpage Mar 8 https://twitter.com/rdmpage/status/707195746823643139Glasgow, Scotland https://twitter.com/search?q=place%3A791e00bcadc4615f

Hey @tdwg https://twitter.com/tdwg what happened to the LSID resolver http://lsid.tdwg.org https://t.co/47pxH8qBkH ? Is this the death of LSIDs?

Was it really broken? While I would like LSIDs to be deprecated, it would be good to phase them out after giving clear notice and direction to a better alternative. On the other hand, if it needs to be fixed, I probably don't have the skills to fix it. Would appreciate your thoughts. I will look at the code in this repository later today.

On Wed, Mar 9, 2016 at 11:38 AM, Markus Döring notifications@github.com wrote:

see #60 https://github.com/tdwg/infrastructure/issues/60 for LSID domain. If we want to server the lsid domain still the tdwg apache virtual host must be reactivated and fixed, see #60 https://github.com/tdwg/infrastructure/issues/60

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/tdwg/infrastructure/issues/67#issuecomment-194471728.

[rdmpage]

http://lsid.tdwg.org looks like this: I'd be sorry to see LSIDs go, simply because for a key class of data (taxonomic names) just about everybody uses them to serve RDF in a consistent format. It's one of the few success stories in the field but we managed to turn victory into defeat by not actually doing anything with the resulting RDF :( Something of a missed opportunity...

Anyway, it would be useful if http://lsid.tdwg.org was resurrected...

[stanblum]

Thanks for the feedback, Rod.

Does anyone else have an LSID resolver running that we could point to instead, or is the only way to keep lsids functioning to restore the one on the tdwg domain?

On Wed, Mar 9, 2016 at 12:19 PM, Roderic Page notifications@github.com wrote:

http://lsid.tdwg.org looks like this: [image: lsid] https://cloud.githubusercontent.com/assets/83306/13649097/d2a0e4d8-e633-11e5-990b-0519232cdd51.png I'd be sorry to see LSIDs go, simply because for a key class of data (taxonomic names) just about everybody uses them to serve RDF in a consistent format. It's one of the few success stories in the field but we managed to turn victory into defeat by not actually doing anything with the resulting RDF :( Something of a missed opportunity...

Anyway, it would be useful if http://lsid.tdwg.org was resurrected...

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/tdwg/infrastructure/issues/67#issuecomment-194490247.

[rdmpage]

I'm not aware of another public LSID resolver. I have a tester at http://darwin.zoology.gla.ac.uk/~rpage/lsid but that's not set up as a simple resolver. Given that the TDWG resolver is mentioned in TDWG documents, e.g. https://raw.githubusercontent.com/tdwg/guid-as/master/lsid/applicability_statement.doc should TDWG support the resolver? Maybe something like a Docker image could be created to make this service self-contained and easier to maintain.

[timrobertson100]

Please continue the LSID discussion on the LSID ticket https://github.com/tdwg/infrastructure/issues/60 as the decision to run LSID is unrelated to the location of the DNS server.

[MattBlissett]

I'm closing this, since tdwg.org is correctly migrated to Amazon — thanks, Stan.

lsid.info isn't doing anything at present. I'm not sure it was doing anything before — it points to a different IP than lsid.tdwg.org.

If TDWG decide to run something using the domain we can change its DNS too.