D5S4: Recap and Catch-up

Session Recording

Meeting Summary

1. Current infrastructure 

   1. Currently, the national data center will take 2-3 years to reach capacity. As a result, financial support has been requested until then. 

   2. The Ministry of Education (MoE) does not have any infrastructure in place. 

   3. Currently Somalia has online hosting on BlueHost and HostGator, where ministries can host and manage their websites. 

2. Infrastructure requirements/development - Several options are available for the Somalia team to consider

   1. Short and medium term best could be to have a separate externally owned server. This could be running inside a ministry. 

   2. Hosting platform 

      1. Cloud - could be bought from Google Cloud or Azure but it would be more expensive than the deployment of a local server.

      2. Virtual Private Server
         Provides a dedicated virtual machine for specific installations. Offers full control of the machine. Infrastructure monitoring is done by the service provider. Recommended for ease of use. Though in a non cloud environment this would have very high costs compared to AWS. 

      3. Local Server
         Lower in cost. It requires configuration and monitoring of the server. It is not intended for production use in the initial months but can support production use late, though it will require dedicated support in the daytime. It will allow us to learn and improve the server maintenance. Hosting infrastructures across ministries can help facilitate data exchange and use information mediator BB. It is more cost-effective, though it has maintenance costs. 

      4. Online servers are also an option that was brought up due to challenges related to consistent internet and electricity, as well as logistical challenges in the country. 

      5. It would be better to host Joget and Typo3 on different servers since it would be a good idea to compartmentalize into smaller services on different servers rather than overloading a single server. 

      6. The final decision on the type of hosting platform will be based on Somalia’s sovereignty and policies regarding it. 

3. Joget requirements 

   1. If done as a standalone installation, it does not require many resources. Multiple Joget installations or a Kubernetes environment (like in Sandbox or MiniKube) will require more resources and an advanced infrastructure. 

   2. Such a setup has low maintenance costs since the clusters are self-balancing. It can self-adjust based on the number of pods and resources as the load increases or decreases. 

   3. Jooget and Typo3 should not be hosted on the same platform for best functionality. 

3. Support required 

   1.  Financial support is needed to set up a hosting infrastructure for the years before the national data center is ready

4. Immediate and short-term goals:

   1. Finish Joget prototyping for High School Certificates

   2. Identifying a local provider for the hosting platform. If a cloud server is not available for hosting, then identify the international cloud provider. 

   3. Get a quotation on hosting services provided in the country

   4. Prepare government guidelines/requirements for hosting government platforms

5. Medium-term goals:

   1. Setting up a hosting platform for the service. 

6. Additional points

   1. If the local server option is decided, it is very important to train local staff to maintain it. 

   2. More clarity on the current infrastructure in Somalia as well as technical details for deployment of Joget and Typo3 to be discussed in the next meeting. 

   3. Setting short, medium and long term goals also to be discussed in the next meeting.