[RAS] new facility

[Christian Zimmermann]

I have started working on a request for new facilities for RAS. As I am 
not familiar with cloud computing, and Thomas suggested we use that, I 
have read some about it. I do not quite see why we would want to use that.

My understanding is that its main benefit is to avoid buying and 
maintaining hardware. This is useful when 1) you do not have the means for 
big expenses, 2) you do not have the ability to maintain systems and 3) if 
your computing power needs are very variable over time. You can then avoid 
spending much for peak loads.

I have little worry for 1) and 2), as the St. Louis Fed can buy and 
maintain. As for 3), our needs are much less cyclical than we think, and 
by doing it intelligently, can be completely smoothed by making automatic 
searches load dependent.

Cloud computing may make more sense for the centrality project, but given 
that it uses the same data as RAS, it would actually make better sense to 
put it on the same machine as well. Hence, I am tending towards requesting 
a really powerful machine that could handle RAS and centrality, trying to 
figure out the specs needed for 2 million templates, 50000 authors and 1.2 
million author claims, essentially double what we have now. I akm thinking 
of adding some essential new functionalities to RAS, but none would 
require any substantial coumputer resources.

Comments?

Christian Zimmermann                                     FIGUGEGL!
Department of Economics
University of Connecticut
341 Mansfield Road, Unit 1063
Storrs, CT 06269-1063
http://ideas.repec.org/zimm/   christian.zimmermann at uconn.edu
http://ideas.repec.org/e/pzi1.html