It's October, and Halloween is just a few weeks away, but why wait to get scared?  I've got a story to share about the recent update to SharePoint Server subscription edition SPSE and the 23H2 feature update. Embrace yourself. As I share the scary truths, there's a downgraded version of the SharePoint framework included in this update. A downgrade? That's not a good scenario for developers who've already upgraded or deployed their projects using SPFX 1.5.1. And while there's also added support for newer versions of React and the Office UI-favorite React components, in doing so, you've got to dive into the tangle web of conflicting dependencies and uncover the risks of mixing SharePoint framework versions. So stick with me if you want to uncover the secrets and find out how to navigate this treacherous terrain. Hey, I'm Andrew. And if you're new here, be sure to hit that subscribe button to see when I publish new videos and subscribe to my bi-weekly newsletter, the Full Stack Devs Microsoft 365 Playbook, to join thousands of fellow Full Stack developers for insights, guidance, and keeping up with the latest news on Microsoft 365 and Azure development. This story is for those who are involved with SharePoint Server subscription edition and the most recent update, SharePoint Server subscription edition 23H2. This update released in September of 2023 is the second update for SPSE this year. And with this update, there were mentions of updates to the SharePoint framework and adding support for newer versions of React and the Office UI-fabric React components. However, it was not clear exactly what they meant by these updates. Now, from what I gathered, the updates actually downgraded the version of the SharePoint framework that's included in the 23H2 feature update compared to the previous update that was released earlier this year, 23H1 that I've already covered. The other thing in the release notes is that they said they added support for React 16 and the Office UI-fabric React version 7. Now, before I explain the impacts on our projects, let's first understand what this update does. Now, experienced SharePoint framework developers will be interested to hear that React and the Office UI-fabric React have been updated to newer versions than what was the included versions that were generally available in the 23H1 updates for SPSE. SPSE shipped with SPFX 1.4.1, just like SP Server 2019. And earlier this year, with the 23H1 update, Microsoft surprised us by upgrading the SharePoint framework. Now, this broke from the previous position of not upgrading the SharePoint framework in on-premises SharePoint Server deployments. The SPSE 23H1 update upgraded the version of the SharePoint framework from 1.4.1 to 1.5.1. Now when I saw this update, I was hoping we'd see the start of a big jump in the SharePoint framework with the second half update that came out this year. But as I mentioned previously, it didn't really go exactly how we expected. In the article announcing this update that Microsoft published in September, that they would continue to improve and expand the capabilities of the SharePoint framework in SharePoint Server subscription edition in future updates. However, they didn't specify which version of the SharePoint framework this feature update included. But in the same paragraph, though, they said this. It adds support for React 16 and the OfficeUI Fabric React Version 7, allowing developers to utilize these newer component versions and their SPFX solutions. So these two statements give us some clues as to what version of the SharePoint framework we're using. Because SPFX 1.7 that was released in January of 2019 added support for React 16, bumping it from React 15. And SPFX 1.12 released in April of 2021 added support for the OfficeUI Fabric Version 7. So initially it appeared to me that they updated the SharePoint framework to version 1.12.1. This update would have included the platform dependency upgrades for React and OfficeUI Fabric React. It made sense since that was also the last version of the SharePoint framework generator that supported creating on-prem projects with starting a new project. Again, that was version SPFX 1.12.1. But because they didn't explicitly say which version of SPFX was in this update, I wasn't really sure of it. So I asked some people, Microsoft, about this, and eventually I got a confirmation that raised a lot more questions than answers. The version of SPFX included in this update is 1.5.0. And later I saw a poll request in the repo for the SharePoint developer docs that confirmed it was SPFX 1.5.0. Now that poll request, I'm going to come back to that in a minute. Let's stay on the topic of the SharePoint framework version. You read that right. That is a downgrade of the SharePoint framework from the 23H1 update, which is 1.5.1, to the 23H2 update, which is 1.5.0. So what does this mean? Well, if anybody upgraded their projects or created new projects for SharePoint Server subscription edition that targets SPFX 1.5.1, they'll likely have problems because once you install the SPFX SE23H2 update, SharePoint Framework 1.5.1 is no longer on the server. So when your SharePoint Framework 1.5.1 project tells the runtime it needs specific versions of the runtime to load for it, wouldn't it fail because it's requesting things that no longer exist? That's just the tip of the iceberg. Wait until you hear the rest of this story. That's really scary about this. Now when I delve deeper and I review the poll request that was submitted to update the documentation on how you upgrade your projects to the newer versions of React and the Office UI fabric, I was absolutely astonished by what I was reading. The instructions advised manually modifying the package.json file to gain support for these new dependencies by setting the versions of React and the React DOM packages to 16.13.1 and adding the Microsoft Office UI fabric React bundle package version 1.15. Now I was surprised enough that they recommended making these changes manually in the package.json which is generally not recommended. If the project's been built once before, there's already going to be a package lock file in the project and that's going to capture a snapshot of all the versions that are installed for all the dependencies. So by simply updating the package.json file, it's not going to update the versions in the lock file. And that assumes that you are starting with a brand new project rather than using an upgraded one. The correct approach in my opinion is to use the npm install command which not only is going to update the package.json file but it's also going to update the lock file and install all the necessary dependencies that you're updating. Now instead of making changes to the package file and then running npm install, you should use the npm install command to ensure that changes are applied consistently throughout your project and those changes will be saved to the lock file. The next set of instructions, they tell you to update the SharePoint framework build dependency packages from 1.4.1 to 1.9.1 but that assumes that your project has never been upgraded or created using the 23H1 update with the SharePoint framework 1.5.1. It assumes you're starting directly from the default version that we had that was included with SPSC. But that's not the whole story and that's not the alarming part because then the pull request tells you to update all of the other SharePoint framework packages in your project to 1.5.0. Yeah, effectively what this means is that you're going to be using one version of the SharePoint framework to build and compile your project and run the local web server using SharePoint framework 1.9.1 while using a different version 1.5.0 in your actual project as a dependency so when the SPFX runtime loads the component on the page it's going to load a different version than the one that was used to build the project. Is that even going to work? Oh, I mean, I guess they tested it but this has never been a supported scenario in the seven years of SPFX. We have never seen them recommend using two different versions of the SharePoint framework. What does all this mean? Well, I think that it's clear where things stay in but it's a little confusing on where we're supposed to go from here. Now Microsoft is aware of this and I think they're currently investigating the situation trying to determine exactly what recommendations they should provide but this is a big concern because the 23H2 update it's already been released and there are probably customers who have already installed it but this does lead me to a couple questions. First of all, what happens to anyone who's already deployed or upgraded the project using SharePoint framework 1.5.1 to SPSC with the 23H1 update that's already installed? Is there a downgrade option? Won't everything just break? Can you really have two versions of the SharePoint framework in one project because after seven years, this is the first time we've heard this from Microsoft. We have two versions of the SharePoint framework. One for the tool chain and one for the runtime. We are dealing with different versions of React and Office UI fabric and Fluid UI with a version that was never supported in this way. It seems that the SharePoint framework engineering team might not been aware of what was happening with the on-prem update so I'm not really sure where this really leaves us because all of these questions remain unanswered. One thing is certain in my mind though, this is a mess. This 23 update for SPSC is keeping in the spirit of Halloween and it should scare the heck out of you. So here's my guidance on how you should proceed. First of all, if you're gonna install the SharePoint server subscription edition 23H2 update right now, don't deploy or upgrade any of your SharePoint framework projects beyond SPFX 1.4.1. SPFX 1.5.1 does not exist on the server with 23H2. And if you wanna use newer versions of React with the Office UI fabric React on SPSC, the only way to do that is to create some Frankenstein SPFX project that uses different versions of React to the Office UI fabric React with SPFX 1.5.0. That's scary. Now the second thing is that if you have any custom SPFX solutions 1.5.1 that you've already deployed to your SPSC H1 environment, don't install H2 until Microsoft clears up their docs and issues a statement about this. My third bit of guidance is to ignore all of the guidance that is in the unmerged pull request that shows how to create this bastardized SPFX solution to support different versions of React in Office UI fabric React. And number four, if you don't have any custom SPFX solutions, including SPFX controls from independent software vendors or have any customizations that they've applied or included with purchased products, you must ensure that when you install SPSE H2, you verify that any ISV solutions or custom solutions are using SPFX 1.4.1 or lower. Now I would be surprised if the SPFX engineering team could support this configuration by having a mix of different SPFX versions and requiring manual updates to the package.json file to accommodate varying versions of React in the Office UI fabric React. What do you think about this update to SPSE? Are you gonna go ahead and risk it by applying it to your environment or are you gonna wait and see what Microsoft says? Let me know by dropping a comment below and let me know if you wanna see more videos about the SharePoint framework or other Microsoft 365 developer topics. And if you like this video, please give me a thumbs up and hit that subscribe button so you can see when I publish new videos. And also subscribe to my bi-weekly newsletter, the Full-Stag Debs Microsoft 365 Playbook. Enjoy thousands of fellow Full-Stag developers for insights, guidance, and to keep up with the latest news on Microsoft 365 and Azure development topics. Again, I'm Andrew Connell, thanks for watching and I'll see you next time.


And I'm going to erase this now, and if I may just put the whole thing together in one equation, if I may just to capture this kind of chaotic behavior, we can say that the rate of profit for the whole economy, so that's the rate of profit for the economy, then is the combination of these two grand rates of profit. We have here the rate of profit in the C industry, and we have the rate of profit in the V industry. So this would be in the V industry. However, the industries may not contribute the same to the whole economy. And so we want to weight them to take into account their different sizes in the economy. So let me do that. I'll weight them by the proportion of their surplus in terms of the total value added in the economy. I would add up the total value added by the workers. Remember what this is now, the total use value of labor power in terms of what the workers yield. Same thing over here. So this would be the surplus value in C as a proportion of the total value. This would be the proportion in the V of adding up of the surplus value in the economy. Roughly, very roughly. For the United States, this coefficient may be 2 thirds. This coefficient may be 1 third. In other words, the wage good industry contributes more to the overall growth in the economy, the profit rate, than does the means of production. OK, so here's our weighted average equation for the two profit rates and the rate of profit for the economy as the weighted average of the two. So what do we say here? This is going up. We start with an expansion. And therefore, this is pushing it up. Expansion, everybody is happy. Jobs are available. Sales are growing, and so forth. That very expansion sets in motion in terms of what we've done here before this intense competition within each and every industry. That drives down the rate of profit, organic composition of capital going up, and so forth. And that drives this down. In turn, the very driving down of the rates of profit acts to cheapen the C and V, drives it up. The very cheapening of C and V allows some firms to expand their K star, increases competition, once more, drives the rate of profit down. It's a never-ending process of the economy being pushed and pulled in different directions. To summarize, and to pick up the thread that we had in the first part of the course, the profit rate in the economy, the economy, the demands for labor power, the demands for the means of production, wages, profits, and so forth, are all over-determined. They're all sites of these contradictory forces. Just like you and I as human beings and everything else under the sun, including the sun itself, is being propelled in different directions by these different social and natural movements, such is the case with the economy. It's not the economy, nor you and I, are well-ordered entities. Rather, we are sites of different determinations. The example I just gave you is how the economy itself is a site of these different pushes and pulls. Hence, it's not under control. Engels captures this, the great friend of Marx and co-writer. He captures this by saying the capitalist economy is in chaos. It's the nature of capitalism. It continually drives the workers, and of course everybody else, into this frenzy of expansion and decline. Later on, as I mentioned to you, another economist is going to come along. This is Marx's long dead. By now, his name, John Maynard Keynes, you've probably studied him. And he, too, is going to, for completely different reasons, seize upon this idea of we don't know what's going to happen in the economy because of this being pushed in different directions. This uncertainty, what Keynes calls this uncertainty of the economy, which haunts the lonely investor. What Keynes is going to do is recognize the uncertainty, and then he's going to link, connect that uncertainty to the business investor and show how the business investor can cut his or her investment at any moment reacting to this uncertainty of the economy. Let me just do that for a moment, since it's no minor accomplishment by this great economist, Keynes, a non-Marxist. Keynes had no great love for Marxism. What we're talking about here, if I just might translate this, what we're talking about here is that Keynes is focusing on the delta C over C. So he's just focusing on what he calls investment. That is just the investment of new plants and equipment, delta C over C. So we're not focusing on the delta V over V, just that component delta C over C. And Keynes is saying, look, business in our language, capitalists, Keynesian language, the entrepreneur has to make decisions today about what's going to happen tomorrow. So the investment decisions today, the investment decisions today, that delta C over C in Marxian terms, the investment decisions today depend upon the investors' ideas about the future. And the future, obviously, is you don't know what the future is. We're not gods. So we have to guess as what the future will be, and that's going to shape how much investment we make today. Well, the problem is that everything under the sun shapes our expectations of what the future may bring about. All the changes, all the political, economic, and cultural changes today, and natural changes which occur today, will shape our ideas about the future and enhance feedback to affect how much investment we're going to make today in plant equipment and machinery. By the way, before I give you the example, Marx calls this shaping of everything, everything shaping investment decisions today, animal spirits. What that means is as follows. Is that for corporations trying to make decisions about delta C over C, in terms of what we just did, if there's intense competition, then they might be fearful of how this is going to turn out, and they may start paradoxically reduce their investment. And they might reduce it if they're successful, because they're beginning to worry that that profit rate is falling. And hence, even the successful firms may start cutting back on their K-stop, in our case, K-stop plus lambda. When the profit rate is rising, those firms that are, when the profit rate is rising for some firms, because they're innovators, they're doing better, they're capturing super-profits, they may become fearful of the future. And they may begin to, that is fearful that the profit rate eventually is going to fall. And therefore, they may begin to hedge their bets and not invest so much, and hold more of their retained earnings in the form of money, or stocks, or bonds, whatever the case may be. And hence, they may begin to reduce their investment, but just extend this. If today the OPEC is successful in terms of raising the price of oil, such that oil prices take off and there's a worry about inflationary conditions, then business may get scared, frightened, because of that particular event. And even though it may not have a big impact upon their particular investments, they begin to cut back this delta C plus C. And so for a million different reasons, happenings today shape business decisions. And then Keynes linked that change in business decisions to the multiplier, which he got from somebody else, this guy, Khan, KDHN. And he put it together that a change in investment today via the multiplier can cause a recession. So the very uncertainty present, if we can make use of this now, the very uncertainty present in the economy can add its effectivity to business at any particular moment, because you don't know what's going to happen. And hence, that in and of itself can make investment, in my case, K star plus lambda, all over the place, shifting up and down. And that in turn can shape the economy into these expansions and these declines. So that's the summary that I wanted to present to you of the second reason for the business cycle. The first reason, if you recall, the one to lose that, is the very expansion can bid up the prices of inputs, and that can cause a decline. Remember, we did that. And Marx also provides a number of other reasons how we can get these business cycles. Can't do that in 305, but there are a number of other reasons, you can mention another one. There can be what is called the disproportionality between the means of production and the wage going to the street. That is, one industry may be expanding faster than the other, and that differential rate of expansion can cause a business cycle. It can cause the entire economy to slow down. And there's still other examples of this, but I think you get the idea in these two examples that we have discussed in some detail, how and why there can be a business cycle present in capitalism. And that, along with classic exploitation, provides this powerful critique that Marx is giving us of this capitalism. So I shall stop there until the next lecture.


Thanks for coming to us today. Basically, the idea of the conference is to tell you the story of how we built Runabove. Before, I will give you some context of what Runabove is. So, basically, we are part of the OVH group. It's a major hosting provider in Europe. We host 180,000 physical servers in 17 data centers, mostly in France, but also in North America. Nikola and me are really happy to be with you today to share the story of Runabove. Runabove is kind of an internal startup within the OVH group. We are only a few dozen behind this new product. Basically, it's the first commercial public cloud offer of the OVH group. OVH had built multiple beta products in the public cloud offering during the last few years. But we decided with these different teams all across Europe, in Poland, in France, but also in Canada to start fresh and to start fresh using OpenStack. The idea is to build different types of services using this OpenStack implementation. Currently, we offer two types of services, public cloud computing, so basically instances you would get by the hour, and public cloud storage. But as you can see on the graph, the project will go further very soon. We aim at providing services such as bare metal over OpenStack, or things like that. We will go back to that afterwards. To go into what we will tell you today, this is basically the plan of what we are presenting you. We will speak about this different part for about 30 minutes, and then we will have a few minutes to take your questions. We will now leave you with Nicolas, which will present you as a network part. Hi everyone, I'm Nicolas. I will talk about the technical aspect of Runabove, starting now with the network. So, here is the map. OVH, the group, has a few data centers across the world, mainly in Europe and North America. We have connected these data centers with some fiber, which goes to 3 terabytes per second, its capacity of our network. And here you can see 19 points of presence around the world, mainly in Europe and North America. It's a point of presence where we peer. So, for Runabove, we decided that if we want to make a powerful cloud, then we need a powerful network. So, to do that, we've designed our network from scratch. On the left side of this slide, you can see a scheme of a rack. So, entering this rack, there is this OVH3 terabyte network. And on the top of the rack, we have a switch that can commute up to 1 terabyte per second. Then, all the compute nodes running Nova have a dedicated network interface for the customer, which is 10 gigabits per second. On the right side of this slide, you can see a switch and our object storage, which is also connected to this network. But with the great network comes great responsibilities, as OVH already found out, customers right now are not being nice with each other. So, sometimes there is DDoS attacks. We used OVH internal system for that. It's called VAC. What it does basically is that it vacuums clean the incoming DDoS attacks. It does that by scanning the packets incoming in three different points of the world. And when it detects something bad in a few seconds, it removes its back traffic from the traffic incoming to the customer. So, the customer having servers behind that doesn't see anything. And of course, we needed the other way around, which is to prevent customers from running attacks against the outside of OVH network, but also against other customers from OVH or even from run above. This is done currently with DPDK. We scanned the network and when we find that something is bad, we just suspend the VM. As a story, when we went out of beta this summer, the first thing ever a customer did was to rent 20 VMs with 10 GB network and just launch a DDoS attack against another customer. So, we needed this feature from the first steps off from above. About the design of the host we used to make this network powerful, we decided that we needed two different network adapters. The first one on the right side is the one used by the user. It's only for him, so he can do whatever he wants with it, except of launching DDoS attacks. But he has all 10 GB per second for him. But then on the other side, we have another network adapter that we use for administration, monitoring and also for our self clusters. I will talk about that later. So, last point about the network. We are currently building something from scratch, which is very exciting. It's a router because we have a big partnership with Cisco, but they don't actually provide the hardware we need right now. So, we decided to build a router from scratch and this router is currently a work in progress, but it will mainly integrate run above within OVH VRAC. For those who are not familiar with what VRAC is, mainly it allows OVH customers to have private networks between all kind of services within OVH, like dedicated servers, cloud servers, run above instances, whatever. Thanks to this router, we'll provide VPN access, load balancing, IP failover and firewalling. So, the aim of the presentation is to show you how we build that and how you could get more information on your own open stack implementation. But there is also a few different ways we differ from that. And the first one is that we offer as a public cloud provider the possibility to host your VMs in different geographical regions. So, basically, we currently have only two data centers available for run above at the moment. We offer our North America data center, BHS, which is in the Canada just next to the border of the USA, and Strasbourg, which is in the central Europe zone. We have plans to offer also availability for run above VMs and storage in other OVH data centers, but also in new data centers on the west coast in the U.S. and in South Asia. So, this is a plan for 2015. It's important to say that we chose to use open stack also because this means that you basically can add your own data center on premise and even data centers from our competitors and control your VMs in those different services with the same API. So, we are really happy with that if you use VMs within run above in one of these two data centers plus one in your own data center, for example. This is perfect for example if you want to build a disaster recovery plan or if you want to handle some more charge. Of course, the idea behind having different data centers is that you can bring the power we give back to your customers by being close to them. Another way we differ from some competitors is that after discussing with our clients we identified many use cases for public cloud offer and we decided to build a different line of VMs adapted to this specific use case. So, as of today we offer three different offers, sandbox, dead fast and one VM per host. Basically, the sandbox one is designed for staging or testing and it can also be used for non-critical apps. For example, if you have an app monitoring your website or any apps that you would be happy to trust on something that has no warranty resources. Most of our customers would go for the dead fast offering so it's intended for production. It means that it offers high availability and dedicated resources. And we were the first one on the market to offer a public cloud where you would get one VM on one physical host. That means that you have no noisy neighbor. You benefit from all the power of the host to your own. So, what exactly is behind these three different offers? Basically, on both sandbox and one VM per host you benefit from local SSD. So, on the machine you're sharing or on the machine you're the only one on. So, you have great IOPS. But if you choose the dead fast one, you would have a little less IOPS but higher availability because we use distributed storage here. Nicolas will get back to it after to explain you how we build that storage. And also, because you would use the product differently, we include some free traffic depending on the offer issues. So, this is an equivalent of the free traffic you would get for one month using the VM. We also were the first ones to offer a public cloud solution using different architecture. So, you only create one account on one above and then you can spawn one or many VM using either standard x86 setup. So, it's based on Intellexion CPUs. Or you can also spawn instances by the hour based on the power rate CPUs from IBM. This is just a quick video showing you how it is easy to launch a VM. And the easy idea behind this video is to explain that again, for each use case, we wanted to offer the best experience to the customer. So, for example, here we will launch power rate sandbox VM. And the idea behind the sandbox is that that's a VM you would start and stop very often just to test a new version of your software, for example. So, it had to load really quickly. So, the idea is that you choose a data center you want to spawn it into. You choose the type of instance you want to start. And then you will have to choose the OS. So, at the time the video was made like two weeks ago, there was only one OS available on power rate. But now we also offer Ubuntu when we are working with Suzy and Debian also, maybe to offer that over power rate. And as you will see, the instance will be ready in less than 30 seconds. So, this is our easy panel. We also offer Horizon, but Nicolas will get back to that afterwards. Here you are. You've got the IP of your instance, the public IP of your instance. And you can just log to it using any terminal. And there you are. Basically, you should have the answer. Here you are. So, now Nicolas will get more in details with the hardware you will actually get from us. So, after speaking about network to build a powerful cloud, we needed a powerful hardware. So, we decided to go with the latest Intel Xeon. The run at 3.7 GHz, there is no magic behind that, just that in comparison to our competitors, one V-core on run above is usually faster than what they offer. So, again, there is no magic, just it's faster. But the magic is here with our partnership with IBM. We've got brand new Power 8 CPUs and they have 22 cores running 176 threads. So, it's a brand new thing. You cannot find that either on bare metal servers or anywhere else. It's a preview in realm of and it's really good for people who want to test application that have to scale and use a lot of different processes, threads. We see a lot of people testing their app on these machines for that. Here, these two pictures show a bit what OVH and run above is about. It's about hardware. Because it started 15 years ago when Octave started building its own racks, then its own servers, then its own data centers, network from scratch. With that, it allows to put more servers in the same rack. And here we design racks with materials that we build. On the right side, you can see our own water cooling system. It was designed many years ago, but it's still running very well. It allows us to run our data centers with poor user effectiveness of 1.09. It's quite great. There is no air conditioning at all in those data centers, just water cooling. About those poor 8 CPUs that we showed earlier, the first thing we did when we received the IBM servers was putting water cooling on them. About drives, because for powerful cloud, well, you need powerful drives. So, we decided to go with CEF for providing distributed network. So, what we do actually is that we put CEF journals on very powerful SSDs and use a replication factor of three. So, if one node fails, the cluster can rebuild itself. And as it's distributed amongst a lot of nodes, if one fails, there is no big issue with that. This number, we're quite proud of it. It's how fast you can upload objects to Swift from a run above instance. So, if you chunk your file in many pieces, upload them in parallel, you get this result. This is thanks to the network card we saw earlier. And in the cloud, we know that many users are not familiar with OpenStack, and in fact, they don't really care about OpenStack. They just want to get things done. So, they want servers working, running. So, we decided to allow them to use whatever technologies they want to use their servers. So, of course, we provide OpenStack vanilla API. It just works with all software in the market that is designed to work with OpenStack. We provide the run above API, which we use internally for billing and things like that, managing accounts. We provide the simple dashboard that we showed earlier. And we provide, of course, Horizon, which only difference with the OpenStack one is that it's not blue, it's orange. About that, I will present you just a quick setup to show you how it's integrated with run above. We'll take the case that we already have a client and we launch a server on the top of that using private networks. Here you see that we're on Horizon. We already have one server running Debian 7. It has both network, external and internal. And here we are launching a server that will be a web server. We use images available on run above, so here Debian 7. Just add a keeper. Just add networks. And we'll create a post install script that will just install litey, a very small web server. And we'll, in a few seconds, curl that to get it working. So here it's just installing litey with APT, nothing very fancy. But what we are proud of is how fast it launches. So here after clicking on launch, basically in a few seconds, about 30, you get your instance running. This was done on sandboxes, so very, very small instances, very affordable. And running SSD disks. And you see that in a few seconds we'll just have our instance launched. So here it's boning. I think that many of you already know that. But for newcomers, even Horizon can be disturbing. So that's why we designed the previous control panel we showed earlier. Because some users, even Horizon, it's confusing for them. But here we have already an IP and we have SSH on the client. We'll just curl the internal IP of the server and it will just work seamlessly. So in less than 30 seconds we have the result of the request. What is that? Well, for those who know programming a bit, it's Gophers, the symbol of the Go language. Why do we show that? Just because internally we use Go quite a lot. Why? Because it's fast, it's scalable, it can be distributed very easily. As a real-life example, we have currently two regions. When we have requests to make on those two regions, we just run them in parallel. And it's very easy with Go to do that. If next year we get 20 regions, it will be the same. Here, I will show you. It's a tool I've personally worked on. It fixes a problem that we had when we designed the beta version above. It's how to get images to work on public cloud. Because once you're done with setting up OpenStack, Nova and Glance, well, you need to run instances. You need some distribution to run on top of that. And what you can do is Google Ubuntu OpenStack Image and you will get something. Something, but it's not your own image. It doesn't have your software, it doesn't have your touch. In OVH, we already have 60 distributions available for dedicated servers. We thought, well, maybe we'll use that to run above. In fact, we designed this tool, which is just some Python, that takes this available software that is already done in OVH and adapts it to the cloud. So it creates a cookout image partitioning on the top of that file system and install the kernel, install cloud-init packages, whatever we need. We upload that to Glance and it's working. It takes about two minutes to build and it's very easy. As an example, two weeks ago, we had Ubuntu 14.10 that was out. It took us seven lines of Python to provide Ubuntu 14.10 on run above. So basically, that's all we have behind the scenes, but I wanted to conclude by showing you what our customers, some use case of what our customers would actually do with run above and with our implementation of OpenStack. So basically, as you may know, Europe was a bit late to public cloud computing. So what we see is that much of our user would use it next to bare-metal servers for the moment, for example, to handle charge peaks on traffic, on their website, for example. So this is just a quick schema of a customer that it's a famous support website in France called SoFoot. It's a French magazine about football. They were already a customer from the OVH group for many years and they use cheap bare-metal servers for basically using HA ProC to distribute the traffic. They also use more expensive ones from the OVH brand to handle their web server. And during the World Cup, they saw their traffic multiplied by three or four or five some days, some hours. So basically, they would just run above VMs and add them to the pool so that the customers would still get a very quick response from the web servers. This is a really typical use case of run above. It's important to tell you because we are here to tell you the story of the product that run above is also built and used by internal teams within the OVH group. So I told you earlier that we were late to the public cloud, but basically we offer what we call VPS. We have been offering them for a few years now. So basically, it's really affordable VM. You would pay by the months. And we are in the process of moving the underlayer of the VPS to run above. So it will be completely transparent to the VPS customers. They will just get more power for the same price. And run above is also used by an internal team called Spinoff internally. Basically, the idea is to rewrite the billing parts of OVH, for example, so that it's more easy and the customers get more features from it. And again, they will use run above to a stat. So you may have many ideas of how to use run above. And we already saw some crazy users having really imaginative way of using the product. So if you have some, do not hesitate to share them with our customers. We may also reward you if you do so with some free credits. And well, to conclude, the idea behind run above is to... Because it's not a story that is finished. We have still many things to offer you in the near future. So the idea is to offer you always ever more performance at never less expensive price. So that's all we had to tell you today. But we are happy to take your questions. We've got around 10 or 15 minutes to take your questions. Do not hesitate. We also have some vouchers for those of you who want to test run above. Do not hesitate. If you've got questions about how we used OpenStack, how you could use OpenStack internally or to offer an alternative purely cloud, we would be happy to answer you. A question? Yeah. Yeah, actually we are working on offering archive service. So it will still be based on Swift. But the idea is that you would get ever cheaper storage but with some delay to get back your data. And that's what we are about to offer in a few weeks. We also have in the lab section of our service, so basically it's what you would call beta, Docker as a service. So that's something we are testing and we will provide soon. You can already test it for free on run above.com, and the idea behind run above is to connect that to the other service of OVH and as I said quickly earlier to offer you bare metal within run above and also to offer you private cloud within run above. Any other question? Yeah. So currently we use Nutran. It's distributed over the different host we used and we use the sysco hardware for the moment but as we said we are working on a new router build internally. Another question? Yeah. Well the problem is not if they are cost effective for us but for the clients. So as Nicolas said earlier it's basically we are not replacing X86 by Poright. We are just offering both of them to the customers and we are actually doing, we are at the moment doing benchmarks over Poright and for some use cases like for example distributed mass scale computation or some big data usage it's really really effective for the customer because basically on only one machine you can scale vertically really really high. So some applications are not easily distributed over many hosts so for that specific use cases that's really interesting for the clients. Is there another question? Okay, so do not hesitate to come to us to ask question one to one if you want so and do not hesitate to come to grab a voucher or we've got also some free t-shirts for those of you who may be interested.


Falling to order the meeting of the Arlington Select Board for Monday, December 21st, 2020. As a preliminary matter, this is John Hurd, Select Board Chair. Permit me to confirm that all members and persons anticipated on the agenda are present and can hear me. Members, when I call your name, please respond in the affirmative. Daya Mahan. Yes. Joe Currow. Yes. Steve Corsi. Yes. In Lendagans. Yes, but I got to get back to North Pole real soon. We should be getting you there quick. Staff, when I call your name, please respond in the affirmative. Adam Chapter Lane. Yes. Doug The Time. Yes. And Board Administrator Ashley Myers, participating remotely. Good evening. This meeting of the Arlington Select Board is being conducted remotely consistent with Governor Baker's Executive Order of March 12, 2020 due to the current state of emergency in the Commonwealth given the outbreak of the novel coronavirus. In order to mitigate the transmission of the virus and reduce risk of COVID-19 illness, we have been advised and directed by the Commonwealth to suspend public gatherings and as such, the Governor's Order spends the requirement of the open meeting law to have all meetings in a publicly accessible physical location. Further, all members of public bodies are allowed in courage to participate remotely. The order which you can find posted with the agenda materials for this meeting allows public bodies to meet entirely remotely. Sorry. So long as reasonable public access is afforded so that the public can follow along with the deliberations of the meeting. Ensuring public access is not sure public participation unless such participation is required by law. This meeting will not feature public comment. Even members of the public do not provide comment. Participants are advised that people may be listening who do not provide comment and those persons are not required to identify themselves. For this meeting, the Select Quarters convening by Zoom has posted on the town's website identifying how the public may join. Please note that this meeting is being recorded that some attendees are participating by video conference. Accordingly, please be aware that other folks may be able to see you and take care not to screen share your computer, anything you broadcast may be captured by the recording. Please also take care to adjust your screen or device name if you would like to speak in order for us to recognize speakers appropriately and develop accurate minutes is helpful for participants to see your full first and last name when calling upon your rather than nickname. All the materials for this meeting except any executive session materials are available on the Novus Agenda dashboard and we recommend members and the public follow the agenda as posted on Novus unless the chair notes otherwise. We are now turning to the first item on the agenda. Before we do so, permit me to cover some ground rules for effective and clear conduct of our business and to ensure accurate meeting minutes. I will introduce each speaker on the agenda after they conclude their remarks. The chair will go down the line of members inviting each by name to provide any comments questions or motions until please hold until your name is called. Further remember that to mute your phone or computer when you're not speaking, please remember to speak clearly in a way that helps generate accurate minutes for any response. Please wait until the chair yields a floor to you and state your name before speaking. If members wish to engage in colloquy with other members, please do so through the chair taking care to identify yourself. Finally, each vote tonight will be taken by roll call vote. That takes us to the second item on our agenda letter regarding the virtual Tom meeting. Mr. Diggins. Yes, as I said the last time we met and I wanted to submit a letter to my colleagues to let you all know who all participated in helping us to conduct virtual Tom meeting. Yeah, as you can see from the list being it was quite a large number of folks being and that's just testament to the fact that no one can do something like that alone and and this time for all we may bitterly fight over lots of issues. We can come together and work to make something happen and I can't thank the folks on that list enough and also the Tom meeting members who participated at it. And when I sent a similar letter to the Tom meeting members and folks who contributed earlier, there were four names that I left off. I just want to bring extra attention to them tonight. That would be Lynette Culverhouse and Judd Pearson. I think the Pearson who helped with the Tom, the precinct meetings and also Kelly Linema, who is a senior planner on the staff and she's been a person who's helped with the precinct meetings all along and there was a fourth person and right now it's blanking my mind. I didn't write the list down so maybe it'll come to me and I'll come back to that. But anyways, I just want to thank everyone and now it's a part of the official record. Thank you. And Mr. Curl, do you have a motion to receive? I do. I move receipt. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Corsi, any comments? Just very briefly, thank you Mr. Diggins for the letter and all the work that you had done. We had mentioned that earlier and I also want to call out to people that you mentioned in the letter but to work in our office, Ashley Maher and Lauren Costa for all the work that they have done throughout the year and for the work they did with Tom meeting as well. Thank you. Any final comments for Mr. Diggins? Yes. Yes. And that fourth person is Carol Band, who helped get the packets out. So I had actually put someone else in her place, so once again, when you try to keep a list like that, sometimes it's not perfect but you can't be afraid of making mistakes and thankfully they chimed in and now they're part of the record. Thank you. When you make a list, you check it twice, Mr. Diggins. Yes, I know. Thank you very much. I can't. I can't. We have a motion to receive from Mr. Carol, seconded by Mrs. Mahan, Attorney Hunt. Mrs. Mahan. Yes, thank you. Mr. Corsi. Yes. Mr. Diggins. Yes. Mr. Carol. Yes. Mr. Hurd. Yes. It's unanimous vote. Thank you. Next item on our agenda is our consent agenda. We just have minutes of meetings, December 7th, 2020. Mr. Corsi. Yes, I have a move of approval of the minutes. Thank you, Mr. Diggins. I second. Any additional comments, Mrs. Mahan? No, thank you. And Mr. Carol? No additional comments. Attorney Hunt? Mr. Corsi. Yes. Mr. Diggins. Yes. Mr. Carol. Yes. Mr. Hurd. Yes. It's unanimous vote. Thank you. Next item on our agenda is licenses and permits for approval license renewals. So in our packet, we have a list of renewals for contractor-drainer layer license, class 1, class 2, and class 2 non-premises auctioneer, lodging houses, in-keepers, second-hand dealer, public entertainment, automatic amusement, food vendor, common victual wine and malt beverage only restaurant, all-alcohol restaurant, all-alcohol club, theater license, all-alcohol package store, inside of our cafe. Mrs. Mahan? I have a question, but first I'd like to move approval. Thank you. And my question would be either to you, Mr. Chair, or through you to Town Council, contained in these licenses and permits are some businesses that I believe no longer are here in Allington, like the Venture Pub, Common Ground, Tango, perhaps one or two others. They are in there, but do they just go away by attrition or they're in there? How do we handle that? Or how do we not do not have to handle that? Thank you, Mr. Chair. I think the board can still vote on a single slate if it likes. At the end of the day, if a business closes as a condition of its license, it loses any common victual or alcohol license associated therewith unless there's some sort of specific petition to transfer license or do something of that nature. For those that have been sort of added on here, whether it was an oversight or whether they asked to be renewed before their closure, you can still vote as a slate and essentially those licenses will be defunct. Okay. And thank you, Attorney Heim. And Mr. Herd, I would just ask Ms. Mahan, that one or two sentence statement that Attorney Heim stated to us be included so that we can vote as a slate. Thank you, Mr. Herd. Thank you. Mr. Carrell? Yeah, I'll second the motion and I have no further comments. Thank you. Okay. Mr. Diggins, any comments? I was just curious. I mean, the number of closures any higher than it is in a normal year. I mean, given my expectation is higher, but I'm just kind of curious. I don't have the actual information, but I can almost. No, no problem. I can ask someone else later on. Thank you. No other comment. Yeah, I think the answer is yes. Okay. And Mr. Corsi? No comment. All right. Attorney Heim? This is Mahan. Mr. D'Corsi? Yes. Mr. Diggins? Yes. Mr. Carrell? Yes. Mr. Herd? Yes. It's unanimous vote. Thank you. And I'll note that it's as with Ms. Mahan's comment. Great. And that brings us to the next item on our agenda, traffic rules and order on the business. Item number five, discussion and approval, CDBG citizen participation plan amendments. Mr. Carrell? Thank you, Mr. Herd. So this has been put forth before the board by the Department of Planning and Community Development. And it's a proposed amendment to the CDBG plan and process that this board approved, I believe, several years ago. And this amendment is in conformance with all regulations and statutes. And really what it will do is allow the planning department to more quickly issue the draft plan, which then can be turned into the final plan once approved by HUD. After all, public hearings are held. The current planning requires that the draft plan can't be issued, or I believe actually the plan can't be finalized until 14 days after the final public hearing. So what this would do is remove that requirement of 14 days after the hearing for the plan to be finalized so that more quickly we could be putting the plan into action and thereby the funding into action. Mr. Herd, you're on mute. Sorry about that. Mr. Corsi? Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Yeah, I move approval of the amendment as contained in page two of the town manager's memorandum to us. Thank you. And Mr. Curl? I'll second the motion, no further comment. Thank you. Mr. Diggins? Well, once again, I'm just kind of curious, what was the rationale before the 14-day delay? I have to be honest, I don't know what the rationale was originally for the inclusion of the 14-day delay. It could have been, at that time, that's what HUD requirements called for, but I'm not sure why it was originally there. That's why. I mean, yes, I'm totally on board with this. It makes sense. And Ms. Zaman? Thank you, Mr. Chair. I put this question out. It may not have a quick answer to it. What we're voting here obviously pertains to our normal CDBG activities that start usually in January of every year. But with the coronavirus and COVID-19, where we have received two additional allocation of CARES Act funding, how, if any way, does this vote affect the past two CARES Act funding and or any future? So it does not affect the past two. Mr. Chair, if that's okay if I answer. It does not affect the past two, as those are already approved and now issued. And my understanding, if I suppose assuming was there to be a further CARES Act CDBG funding, the first two had been allowed to be conducted under, let's call them emergency rules, not in strict accordance with the normal course of business plan. So those timelines had already been more streamlined than what we normally do. So assuming that, I guess, two assumptions, one that there is more CARES CDBG money, and then if there is that they operate it in the same way, this likely would not impact it. But should they not allow us to operate it in that streamlined fashion, this would provide a streamlining such that after the board's final hearing on any new funding, the plan could be issued in a more timely fashion than the current regulations allow or the current plan allows. And I would just ask the town manager, Mr. Chapter Lane, I totally agree with your summation in terms of eliminating the 14-day backdating or post-dating requirement regarding regular CDBG. And I do accept that this would apply to if there were any further federal funding would allow us that accelerated process. If you could just, unless you feel confident, which I do feel confident with that statement, but maybe if you could just follow up a planning just to make sure that that is the case and or if we need to take a more comprehensive vote regarding the vote before us and any future federal CARES Act funding. Thank you. Yes, and I can verify that as well. Thank you. All right. We have a motion for approval. Mr. Diggins. Yes. Mr. Keuro. Yes. Mr. Herd. Yes. It's unanimous vote. All right. And so the next item on our agenda, item number six, is a vote to select and approve a member a board designee to the Envision Arlington Task Corps. Sorry, Envision Arlington. Is it just called Envision Arlington? Envision Arlington. And I, this is either for the advisory board or the standing committee. I'm not sure if Mr. Diggins knows it. I was under the impression from Mr. Brazil and Clark me that it was going to be the advisory board, which is different than the standing committee as far as I understand. And I will certainly be in touch with some town council to find out how that will affect my other interactions with the various, with the standing committee. I'm not an official member of the standing committee. I'm not a voting member. I attend a lot of their meetings, which is one of the reasons I was recommended for this position, but I also participate in some of the task groups associated. So I will check in with you, Mr. Heim, to find out what I can continue doing. But I would very much like to be a part of the advisory board. Understood. Attorney Heim, does that correct you? Yeah. Yes. So if, thank you, Mr. Chair. Members of the select board can serve on more than one committee or board so long as there's some specific thing that's calling for them to be appointed. So there's no problem with being on the select board and being on the advisory board per se. And there's no problem with being on the standing committee as well as on the advisory board. But my understanding is that Mr. Diggins is not on the standing committee as a member. But it's just involved with a lot of Envision Arlington activities. Envision Arlington task groups don't have a membership. They have a sort of set of liaisons that are derived from the standing committee. So again, I'm not concerned at all. But we can certainly talk about it more just to clarify which roles come with which responsibilities. Thank you. Is it appropriate to take a vote and make Mr. Diggins our liaison to the advisory board? Yes. Okay. All right. Can I just ask a question on that to the chair or through the chair of town council? Is this a vote before the select board or is this a designee appointment with other subcommittees by the chair? Which would you need to vote? This is, to my understanding, you folks are voting on whether or not to have Mr. Diggins serve as a select board's representative, which I believe is ex officio, on the civilian advisory board, which is created by town meetings. So it should be a vote of the full board rather than what you're referencing, Mrs. Mahan, which is subcommittees and entities of the select board. Does that make sense? Thank you, Mr. Chair. Yes, and then Charlie Hahn. So what I understood is that this was the advisory board for Envision Arlington being not the civilian review board. Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah. And so I would be a designee to the Envision Arlington advisory board. This is different than being a liaison to the standing committee. It's usually when you're a liaison, you're an ex officio, but I think on the advisory board, that's a whole different function. And I think the extent that the board makes decisions, I would be voting as the select board's representative on the advisory board for Envision Arlington. Mr. Chairman. Yes. I apologize, Ms. Mahan. Mr. Diggins, I'm sorry, I get my advisory board wires crossed. So yeah, if this is a selection to a advisory board for Envision Arlington, it's still not an entity of the select board. So I think a vote is appropriate. I understand the board's handled some of these things in a couple of different ways, but it's not as if it's an appointment to one of your committees. My understanding is that this would be an appointment of a larger body and you're selecting which one of you will serve on this rather than a body that a member of the board is sort of on as a part of its own subcommittee or its own advisory groups. This group is to advise Envision Arlington. So I think a vote would be still be appropriate. All right. I will take a motion to appoint Mr. Diggins as the select board's appointee to the Envision Arlington advisory board. So moved. Seconded by Mr. Corsi. Any additional comments, Ms. Mahan? No. Any additional comments, Ms. Diggins? All right, attorney Heim. Again, my apologies for the confusion. Mrs. Mahan. Yes, thank you. Mr. Corsi. Yes. Mr. Diggins. Mr. Curo. Yes. Mr. Hurd. Yes. It's unanimous vote. And I apologize for the confusion on my behalf as well. All right. Next on our agenda, we have correspondence received. So we have forthcoming MBTA service changes in Arlington in the region, Daniel Ampsis, Senior Transportation Planner. We have a dangerous sidewalk from ice and snow at 882 to 892 Massachusetts Avenue, Patricia Warden, town meeting member, precinct eight, former chair, Arlington school committee. And we have emergency egress ingress to private way section of Peck Ave. Cheryl Vosmer, 25 Peck Ave, residence of Peck Avenue and Lanark Road. And Mr. Corsi. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I move receipt of seven and eight and nine. I move referral to DPW to the police department and to town council who have all been working on this issue. Thank you. And Mr. Diggins. Second. Any additional comments, Mr. Curl? No additional comments. Mr. Mahan. I'll say thank you. Thank you. Attorney Hyde. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mrs. Mahan. Yes. Mr. Corsi. Yes. Mr. Diggins. Yes. Mr. Curo. Yes. Mr. Herd. Yes. So you hand him his phone. Thank you. And it takes us to new business. Attorney Hyde. Happy holidays, everybody. Thank you. Mr. Chaplain. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Some of my new business may overlap with some other, with some of the board members. But first, I would say happy holidays to both the board and the viewing public tonight. Next, I want to share that I had both an interesting and I would say somber or solemn weekend in Arlington. The interesting part, I was able to tour the food link building that's being renovated. I know some board members have had that opportunity as well. And just from my own perspective, the transformation of that property is really, truly incredible. They're getting close to being finished early in 2021. And they've been working on this vision for a number of years now, still serving the community with their critical services, especially critical in the time of this pandemic with food insecurity on the rise. And for anybody, for any board members who haven't had a chance to tour, I know they would be happy to give you a tour. And I highly recommend it. They've really, I think they're providing a community benefit via their work. And they'll ultimately be providing a community asset with this building being both aesthetically beautiful and sustainably functionable when it's complete. So that was a very nice opportunity. Immediately following that, I was able to join Chairman Hurd at a ceremony called Reeds Across America at the Mount Pleasant Cemetery. Taking an opportunity in partnership with the town's sponsor in this event, Iron Mountain, to recognize the service of veterans during this holiday season. So that was, once again, excellently put together by our veteran's agent, Jeff Chunglow. And then finally on Sunday, I joined board member Diggins at, again, a solemn ceremony where the ghost bike for Charlie Proctor, the young man who's tragically killed at the intersection of Mass Ave in Appleton Street. The ghost bike for his remembrance and his memorial was placed by his family. Those, his loved ones on Sunday along with some folks from Mass Bike who helped with the placement. So speaking with some of the family, this was their first opportunity to really have any opportunity to, excuse me, to memorialize Charlie. They weren't able to do a memorial service based on the pandemic. So, you know, difficult for them and certainly difficult to be there, but important to provide the opportunity to memorialize him. So that's all I have for new business. Thank you. Yep. Diggins? Yeah, so three things I'll keep them short. You know, and maybe I should have said this when the letters came through, but, but we respect it in BTA. Now that it seems like we're going to get some money from the feds, it'll be interesting to see how things, how that impacts the changes to the service cut to me. And, and as I said in one of our previous meetings, I will pursue finding out more about how we are assessing things. I mean, regardless of what happens with the funding, that's something I definitely will plan, will follow through on. And in conjunction with what the town manager said, I just wanted to commend him and all the work that he's done on that. It was a long process, being getting this done. There are lots of things through things up. Things were thrown off track a lot and the town manager really persisted. And I have to also say that I was impressed, but not surprised to hear that Michael Rademacher had a DPW and his son actually cleared off, you know, that sidewalk space in order to make it possible because he, the priority was to really take care of store removal in town. And he realized that in order to do that, he was, he needed to keep things on track and he and his son cleared that out. And I was impressed by that and very thankful for that. And the last thing is I attended the Arlington Economic Recovery, Arlington Economic Development Recovery Task Force meeting. And this was right after we had done the rollback in. And, you know, there were businesses there that were affected by primarily the genocides and the owners were clearly upset. But I have to say, I was impressed by how respectful they were to everyone. And I also have to commend the town manager and also Natasha Wharton, I think it's her last name, who were able to respond in a way that defended their position without being defensive. And I thought the whole thing was really carried out well. And as I've said many times, we make the best decisions we can be, they may not be ultimately the right decisions, but we do them with the information that we have. And I support the town manager and the way that he listened to folks and made it clear that if things need to be reconsidered, we will. So thank you. Thank you. And Mr. Crow. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just want to note that this is our last meeting of what has been a very, very difficult year. I mean, not only in our town, but throughout the world. And I can't say enough, thank you to all of our town staff, health and human services, our first responders, as well as the many volunteers who have responded during the COVID crisis during this very difficult time and have helped facilitate some other difficult conversations we've had around equity and justice. So we're all across the board that I know is going to continue. So I'll just note that today is the winter solstice, which means it is the shortest day of the year. And from here on out, we're going to see longer days and more light. And I hope that as we move into the new year that we'll also kind of metaphorically see a lot more light as we start to distribute the COVID vaccine and bring our community back up onto its full strength. So thank you, Mr. Chair. And I wish greetings of the season to all of my colleagues and staff and to all of the residents of Arlington and is hoping for a happy new year. Thank you, Ms. Mahon. Thank you, Mr. Chair. And I'll try to be as brief as I possibly can be. First, I'd like to thank all the men and women GPW Department of Public Works for their work on our most recent storm, considering that we've lost, we're down with subcontractors to help out with that. And I know they put in long hours with our first responders to respond to that storm event. But I think it was a good, I don't want to say dress rehearsal, but for any storms coming in the future, I've been through Arlington and then Burlington, Lexington, Bedford, etc. And we were curb to curb. And most of them still out there in terms of the main thoroughfares, as well as curb to curb around our schools, which is very important. The second thing is something that myself, my colleagues have had extensive conversations with the town manager in terms of the coronavirus, COVID-19 and now a vaccination plan. The manager has indicated to all of us that through Christine Bongiorno, our Director of Health and Human Services Board of Health, that will be the entity that is sort of not sort of that is overseeing Arlington's vaccination program. And I feel very confident in terms of how they will handle that. And I just would leave through the town manager to our HSS Director Bongiorno in terms of sort of getting that plan out and or a very difficult FAQ frequently asked question sheet that might appear on the town's website in terms of if we could think of the top 10 questions that somebody might have in Arlington that they might have regarding a vaccination program sort of centered around certain populations that might not fall into a regular town interface or PCP or I'm looking and I've had this conversation with the manager or something towards developmentally delayed not so much children but adults 22 plus. I don't know if there's anything the town can offer through the Board of Health, Council on Aging, Commission on Disabilities, but I just wanted to put that out there. And then the third point, we sort of talked about this a little bit tonight, but the second allocation of federal CARES Act money that the town of Arlington has received provides similar programs to small businesses that we offered in the first round. However, the guidelines have been extended. It used to be five or less employees. I think it's now 10. If we can get that word out and I would just say to the planning department through the town manager, when we initially did this program, the town received really very little applicants. And the issue was getting the word out. And I've had this conversation at CDBG subcommittee meetings that we need to focus on lower income small business. But that means we need to get the word out a different way. And what happened with the first round of the CARES Act too, funding, was myself along with four other Arlington residents, including Kathleen Dossi from Cambridge Savings Bank, we split up the town of Arlington, not just Mass Ave, but Summer Street and Broadway. And we all checked in and made sure we walked into the businesses that were applicable and saw far more applicants. And I would just say with the additional staff added to the planning department, I'd be willing to do that again, but I'd rather not. I'm earning my $3,000 a year salary. So I would hope that the planning department could do that. But if that doesn't happen, if we could do what we did before, if we don't get that many applications, we can extend the deadline and then myself and others can go out and get that word out. I'm not trying to be a complainer. I'm hoping to meet myself and the citizens don't have to do that again. And then I'm still waiting on something I've said, I think three or four times now, in terms of being mindful of safety of employees, as well as delivering town services. I do know, again, Town Hall, the select board office, Town Clerks, Treasurers, and I do see the purchasing agent three days a week. But if we could really, I've seen like the city of Worcester and others that, for them city, but town offices are available to be open, usually by appointment only. I'd like to see that with all of our town services, not just in the Town Hall. I really like to see a plan on that. I don't want to ask for it again. And then we did this at the beginning of the meeting. But Happy Hanukkah, Merry Christmas, Joyous Kwanzaa, and God bless the new year. I can't wait to end 2020 and enter into 2021. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Mr. Horsing. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just a couple of things. First off, this morning, Mrs. Mahan, Town Manager and I participated in the Long Range Planning Committee meeting to start discussing or continue discussions on presentation of revisions to the five-year plan and the budgeting process for fiscal 2022. Given everything that has happened in town and around the country and uncertainty with future state aid and just receipts, it's going to be a particularly challenging year. I thought it was a very good meeting. There were some discussions today surrounding the schools and the challenges that they have because of the decline in enrollment and how that affects the budget process and state aid. So we had a good meeting. There's going to be further meetings in January, and I will update the board at that time. I also want to wish my colleagues and Mr. Chapter Lane and Attorney Heim happy holidays to town staff and to the residents of Arlington. As Mrs. Mahan said, 2021 cannot get here soon enough. So thank you very much. Thank you. I also wanted to just thank TPW for all their work. I know they've been working not just the day of the storm but days and days and days after, and the roads are great. You can never make it 100%, but the job they do is always very commendable compared to surrounding communities. So I want to thank them for all their efforts. As Town Manager mentioned, we attended on Saturday the Rease for Across America event. Again, I feel like broken record sometimes, but I can never say enough about the work that Jeff Chunglow does on behalf of our veterans in town. In the midst of a pandemic, it's really amazing the events that he continues to put on for our veterans. It really was a great event. I want to thank Iron Mountain, the principal sponsors, and then just share that there is a tree of remembrance that's posted in the cemetery by the Warren Terror Memorial, and it's a place where residents can go to hang either ribbons that are provided or specific remembrances for veterans in their lives. So it's certainly a good thing to participate if you're able to do so. And then the last thing, just to mention briefly, is I just want to share that I did pull papers to run for reelection to the Arlington Select Board, so I do intend to resubmit them and run for a second term. I've had a great three years. It's been very challenging. It started off a little slow and then sped up very quickly, and the past year has been very difficult for everyone, and there's a lot that we've accomplished, but there's really a lot that we still have to do, and I think I have the energy to participate in that. So I will be engaging in whatever a virtual camp, I'll have to take some notes from Mrs. Mahan and Mr. Diggins as to what a virtual campaign looks like, but I'm happy to be moving forward with that. So, on that note, I will take a motion to adjourn. Motion to adjourn by Mr. Kairos, seconded by Mrs. Mahan, Attorney Heim. Mrs. Mahan. Yes, thank you, Attorney Heim. Mr. DeCorsi. Yes. Mr. Diggins. Yes. Mr. Kairos. Yes. Mr. Herd. Yes. Mr. unanimous vote. Thank you all. Have a good night, folks. Take care. See you all.


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If you're tuned into the second season of HBO's hit series, The White Lotus, you're likely also noticing the stunning backdrop. The Italian coastal spots shown make for a dreamy vacation to say the least, and no doubt the location we see the most of is the resort, part of the fictional White Lotus luxury hotel chain. In reality, this property is a four-season San Domenico Plaza located in Taormina, a city on the east coast of Sicily overlooking the sea. Also, Michael and I have dropped our own house tour of our new home that we moved into this year, so go ahead and subscribe to our personal channel if you want to see where we're living and more of what we're up to. In these videos, we don't reveal any addresses, and even though I've done a house tour of my own place, please do not show up at any private residences because it's not safe for anyone. Of course, while watching season two of The White Lotus, there's so much drama going down with the cast of characters that we already have a lot to focus on, but that lavish hotel is too hard to miss. The real-life space, The San Domenico Palace, offers up 111 suites, courtyards, historic gardens, a spa, fine dining, and an outdoor infinity pool, a pool which we've seen on the HBO show quite a lot. When choosing the location to shoot the show at, The White Lotus creator, Mike White said, I think Sicily is the perfect place for romance and sexual politics. When we saw the four seasons in Tower Mina, it was just such a beautiful location, and it just sold this kind of old, world-European summer vacation. Well, I think as we watch the season of the show, we can see that he was right. While The White Lotus was originally envisioned as a limited series due to the fact it was created during the pandemic times and needed to be shot in one controlled location originally, that all changed once the show was a major hit. This time, the mostly new cast, aside from Jennifer Coolidge and John Grease characters, include humorless attorney Harper Spiller, played by Aubrey Plaza, womanizing businessman Dominic DiGrosso, played by Michael Imperioli, and a handful more. Well, with the impressive cast comes a new setting as well, and while season one of the show utilized the four seasons resort Maui at Wailea, this time the cast went to the four seasons San Domenico Palace, Tower Mina, a stunning property overlooking the Ionian Sea, and Mount Etna Volcano on the east coast of Sicily. Before we get into checking out the resort grounds and interiors, let's get some background on the San Domenico Palace. The upscale hotel was first built during the 14th century, but back then it was a private home for a wealthy local, Baron Damiano Rosso Daltavilla. And 1430 after his death, the massive estate was briefly used as a convent, and it continued to operate as one for over 400 years, until one of the original owners' ancestors took back possession of the property. During his ownership, he added a large wing to the estate and transformed it into a luxe hotel. The hotel opened its doors to the public in 1896, and though it may have once been a convent, it was perfect for vacationing guests. In a 1907 news article, the San Domenico Palace was spoken about. The old monks would no doubt be surprised could they look in on their old home and see the commodities cells comfortably furnished, heated by steam and lit with electricity and gas. The large refectory makes a fine dining room with loggia where on fine days breakfast is served. The cloisters and garden, now a beautiful park, delightful places in which to sit and exercise in during the day in rain or shine. While the 300-foot corridors, wide and furnished with numerous tables and chairs, are comfortable as promenades or social halls. It shouldn't come as a surprise then that the San Domenico Palace quickly became the place to be. High status individuals in history all came to stay at Sicily's hottest hotel, including playwright Oscar Wilde, King Edward VII, and more. It was taken over by German troops during World War II, but it reopened as a fancy hotel in 1946 and soon was just as popular as it was in its early days, this time with Hollywood stars of the era like Sophia Loren and Audrey Hepburn coming to stay. For a fun fact, the famous toxic couple Richard Byrne and Elizabeth Taylor are even said to have had a major scrap at the hotel one night in 1967, with the actress even smashing Amanda Lynn over her husband's head. Summer 2021 was the start of a new chapter for the luxury resort however, as it was updated and renovated, then being rebranded as a Four Seasons Hotel. Now, the Four Seasons San Domenico Palace offers the best service and luxury amenities you can find in Sicily, boasting 111 rooms and suites among a handful of perks. Some of the amazing features throughout the hotel include a five star gym, a botanica spa, a 69 foot infinity pool which we've feasted our eyes on plenty in the White Lotus, and upscale restaurants including three on-site eateries. There's also a grand ballroom which used to be the Church of Santa Agata, over 18,000 square feet of indoor and outdoor event space, and beautiful gardens and courtyards to top it all off. The Four Seasons San Domenico Palace is open from spring through fall and conveniently closed for the winter, which allowed cast and crew of the White Lotus to take the place over fully during this time. The first episode of the White Lotus Season 2 already made plenty of use of the massive resort, showing scenes in the hotel lobby, the main courtyard, the bar and chostro lounge, the infinity pool, and on one of the multiple terraces. Principe Tarami is the signature restaurant in the San Domenico Palace, and also makes a focal appearance in the first episode, Italian Dream. Here, the characters share some awkward moments at dinner time and experience their first night at the fictional White Lotus Sicily. In reality, this restaurant is headed by the award-winning Italian chef Massimo Mentaro and offers fine Sicilian cuisine in a posh dining room with views of Taramina Bay. Some of the resort's actual rooms are also used in the White Lotus. For instance, when Tania, Jennifer Coolidge and Greg, played by John Grease, check into the top floor's Royal Suite. On the San Domenico Palace website, this room is described as the most glamorous suite, as you might expect. This room is a luxurious space with 1,507 square feet, including a living room, dining room to seat eight comfortably, two baths, one bedroom with a king-size bed, and a terrace with a private plunge pool. While the room was altered a bit for the show, such as chaining the dining room into the bedroom for filming, you can still tell that it is the same suite. And in the chance that you might be looking to stay at the San Domenico Palace and feel as if you're one of the characters on the White Lotus, well, rates are said to start at about $555 per night, while some suites could even cost you a whopping $6,900 per night. Basically, if you're looking for a White Lotus-themed Sicilian vacation, I think that you should start saving. While the majority of Season 2 was filmed at this Four Seasons property, there are a few episodes and moments that took place elsewhere. Some of these, for example, include the coastal area of Noto on the southeast side of the island. Here we see characters Harper, Aubrey Plaza, and Daphne, Megan Fahey, take a day trip for a tense conversation. They are shown in the town's limestone piazza, and go to explore the Palazzo Ducezio in a memorable new scene. The show also paid a visit to Lumina Studios, located north of the country's capital city of Rome. Clearly, though, the main attraction is the Four Seasons San Domenico Palace, and with the property's lengthy and deep history, dating back to the 1400s, are you surprised that something the place is haunted? Even cast member John Grease noted a paranormal encounter while staying here to film, and this mysterious figure he claimed that he saw was also experienced by co-star Adam DiMarco. DiMarco explained, I heard John Grease telling the story of a nightmare he had, and I just couldn't believe it because I had the exact same nightmare two nights before. There's this bald man who was walking back and forth, and approached the foot of our bed and grabbed us. I woke up screaming, and I didn't really think anything of it until John mentioned his story. It was just so weird that the stories corroborated so cleanly. Take from that what you will, but if any hotel is going to be haunted, I definitely think it would be one this old. In any case, that's going to wrap up this special hotel tour where we checked out the filming location of the White Lotus Season 2, the Four Seasons San Domenico Palace in Sicily. But before we go, answer this question. If you had the chance to stay at this posh resort, what's the amenity or feature which you would be most excited about? And if you're a fan of the White Lotus, who's your favorite character this season? I'm honestly curious. I think it's Harper. Anyways, let me know your thoughts down in the comments. Otherwise, like, subscribe, and turn on your notifications. My name is Carole the Vampire Slayer, follow me on Instagram to chat more, and I'll see you all on the next tour. Bye!