Some time after CentOS Stream 8 and CentOS Linux 7 releases went EOL (End of Life), I had to decommission the infra that was used to build and distribute these releases. (Starting from Stream 9 and beyond, it's built elsewhere and pushed to different CDN)
As I needed some public holidays with family, I created a ticket for myself as a reminder that I needed to also look at replacement for what was the previous mirror.centos.org network. If you aren't aware, CentOS Project is still relying on sponsored infra to distribute the mirror content outside, but when Stream 9 (and now 10) landed on the shared sponsored infra, some (older) servers couldn't , due to hard disk space constraint, carry both CentOS linux 7 (and stream 8) and CentOS Stream 9 / 10.
When all the content was removed from (legacy now) mirror.centos.org network (and so all the sponsored machines behind), I had a look at which machines would be able to carry and distribute the Stream content to join the rsync.stream.centos.org pool (see how to become a third-party public mirror instructions if you want to join a wider pool and also rsync directly from us)
So when I was back from PTO, I started a long (very long) process : reaching out to all existing sponsors that were providing a machine that wouldn't satisfy anymore for our needs and see if they'd accept to offer either a server refresh (some servers were 12y+ old !) , or just add/swap HDD with bigger ones, to ensure that we'd have enough space to hold the whole packages set (CentOS Stream is built for x86_64, aarch64, ppc64le and s390x architectures !).
It took time but finally I was able to have contact with all the listed sponsors below, and they accepted to provide either a new machine, or more capacity.Once new server was ready, I just remotely reinstall on themselves these servers, and ansible took care of configuring the machines (automation FTW !) , depending on their roles/location/etc, and then enter the geoip-based rsync.stream.centos.org pool.
So let me just publicly thank them all ! Kudos to the following sponsors (also part of the larger sponsor group listed on our website) :
- host-stage
- lyrahosting
- serverpoint
- multacom
- altushost
- servermania
- codero
- webnx
- phoenixnap
- dedicatedsolutions
- eukhost
- leaseweb
- itsyndicate
- trabia
- fasthosts
- whitelabelsolutions
- binaryracks
- wehaveservers
- serverhub
Without you, all sponsors, delivering the CentOS Stream distribution for public consumption wouldn't be possible, so let me thank you all again !
PS : if yourself you'd like to sponsor a dedicated server (or more) for the CentOS Project, feel free to reach out to donate@centos.org