So after we’ve extended the virtual cloud server twice, we’re at the max for the current configuration. And with this crazy growth (almost 12k users!!) even now the server is more and more reaching capacity.

Therefore I decided to order a dedicated server. Same one as used for mastodon.world.

So the bad news… we will need some downtime. Hopefully, not too much. I will prepare the new server, copy (rsync) stuff over, stop Lemmy, do last rsync and change the DNS. If all goes well it would take maybe 10 minutes downtime, 30 at most. (With mastodon.world it took 20 minutes, mainly because of a typo :-) )

For those who would like to donate, to cover server costs, you can do so at our OpenCollective or Patreon

Thanks!

Update The server was migrated. It took around 4 minutes downtime. For those who asked, it now uses a dedicated server with a AMD EPYC 7502P 32 Cores “Rome” CPU and 128GB RAM. Should be enough for now.

I will be tuning the database a bit, so that should give some extra seconds of downtime, but just refresh and it’s back. After that I’ll investigate further to the cause of the slow posting. Thanks @veroxii@lemmy.world for assisting with that.

  • delaghetto@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    So, I just want to make sure I understand this as I am a new user from reddit. Instances are server based and cost money. Instances are Lemmy.World, Beebaw, Lemmy.Film, etc etc. These are all seperate hosted instances. Correct?

    And donations would help pay for the server, ie lemmy.world?

    • fubo@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      “Lemmy instances” are analogous to “email servers”: your account is hosted on one of them, but you can communicate with people on other ones, because the servers know how to talk to each other.

      Expanding the capacity of the Lemmy service will involve both (1) more instances, and (2) more resources for existing instances.

  • ZeeKay@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    Just curious, what sort of hardware is lemmy.world using/moving to? Wondering if there’s a good way to predict load based on number of users.

    • slashzero@hakbox.socialEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      Yes. It’s called performance testing. Basically an engineer would need to setup test user transactions to simulate live traffic and load test the system to see how everything scales, where it breaks, etc. Then you can use the results of the tests to figure out how big of an instance you should use for your projected number of users.

      Jmeter, and locust.io are the two biggest open source performance test tools.

      The alternative is take a wild guess. See how the system behaves, and make adjustments in real time… like what @ruud@lemmy.world is currently doing.

  • Clutch@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    Is one donation method preferred over another? That is to say, is one cheaper than the other?

    • mo_ztt ✅@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      You can! ☑️ or ✅. The Patreon page mentioned that you’re officially allowed to edit your username to add flair when you donate. I upgraded to $8/month specifically so I could add the flair, but then got cold feet about the idea. 😀

        • mo_ztt ✅@lemmy.worldEnglish
          0·
          1 year ago

          I was just worried that people wouldn’t get the joke and it would just come across as odd. IDK, maybe it’s actually a good thing if it makes people curious, to encourage more people to do the Patreon.

          • FlaxPicker@lemmy.worldEnglish
            0·
            1 year ago

            I think donators should get a certain level of respect for contributing monetarily. Its not everyone out here donating haha. Some flair is a good way to have a badge that signifies that contribution.