VirtuTech believes in the open-source initiative. We believe that true advancement in technology comes from a collaborative effort between many groups and not just massive corporations. For technology to be diverse and advanced, all people that use it should have the opportunity to be involved in its development. It is with these principles that we construct our own infrastructure.
Not only does VirtuTech advocate for open-source, but we also recommend cloud computing to take advantage of credits for non-profit organizations. It is easy to achieve a full SMB infrastructure for little to no cost on AWS through TechSoup credits. This alleviates the need for space and resources to power large servers or contract collaborative data centers. Here at VirtuTech we use a great VPS called DigitalOcean. It is very affordable for a start-up NPO that can be had for about $5 a month per server. We use it to host our WordPress instance for this blog. As we grow we will look into the feasibility of using a service like AWS or GCP.
While VirtuTech does not really have a recommendation for domain name management, we use NameCheap since it has always been a very affordable option. Other services like GoDaddy, Google domains, or Bluehost will work just as well. We have owned the domain names for our Virtu* projects for several years now, and each domain is a little over $30 per domain, annually. At just $2 a month, per domain, it is very reasonable when securing your space on the web.
Digital Ocean has a WordPress feature which will spin up a Ubuntu LTS droplet with the full host of WordPress additions to create a nice all-in-one solution for WordPress on their platform. For the smallest server possible (1 CPU, 1GB RAM, 25GB storage) it is $5 a month ($7 with backup and fees). This is an excellent place to start. As resource demand becomes greater, we can easily upgrade the server to account for the added traffic to the site. WordPress is an amazing open-source project for blog creation. It may not be as customizable as other platforms, but it gets the job done for our blogs.
The one-click deployments of WordPress are easy to maintain and upgrade. We have had a WordPress droplet for four years now and have had no real problems. The only time I see an issue is when the server has been neglected for some time and updates need to be pushed on the OS level. It is advisable to always backup and update your WordPress instance for better reliability and security. There are many great plugins for WordPress that make it an extremely versatile tool. We currently use the GeneratePress theme to make a very simple and effective blog.
Google Workspace (Formally GSuites) is the platform of choice for VirtuTech. Google takes some of the most complicated enterprise applications (email, users and groups, cloud storage, etc..) and makes them available for a small fee on an intuitive dashboard. Currently prices for Google Workspace start at just $10 a month, but for NPOs there is a special offer through TechSoup to lower the cost of these services. Currently VirtuTech uses Workspace for email, calendar, Google Drive, Google Office, user and group permissions, chat client, and conference calls through Meet.
My internet is provided by Nextlight community fiber here in Longmont. If you ever have the chance to vote on community fiber, I would recommend to vote yes. I have never, in my 30 years of Internet use, been happier with an ISP. It is a true 1 gigabit per second upload and download speed direct to my router. As soon as I acquired this Internet I immediately purchased enterprise grade networking equipment from Ubiquiti.
So far we have discussed the major components of this fledgling startup. Everything is constantly changing. New ideas come and new technologies need to be sought out to accommodate. As new tools are adopted, blog posts will be created. I believe in transparency, but not at the expense of security. So you will see some general information being thrown around in these posts. I am taking care to not reveal anything that can compromise the security of the organization through leaked information. As someone who has worked in the PC security sector for many years, confidentiality and integrity of our systems is vital. The future of computing for VirtuTech is hybrid computing. Running whatever we can locally on donated hardware, and supplementing cloud services where needed.
Overall the infrastructure for VirtuTech is minimal and is done for less than $100 a month. That includes ISP, domains, DigitalOcean droplets, and much more through Google Workspaces. Now that you have an idea of what we use here to make things work, it will help influence you in making decisions for your organization. And as always, please follow this blog for future tech updates.
