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 @[email protected] for assisting with that.
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I’m not an engineer or a dev - but requiring a 32-core, $2000+ CPU to support 12k users doesn’t seem like it would scale well. Is this normal, or does the fediverse require more computational resources than a simpler setup like reddit? How would a fediverse instance with 100k users be maintained?
Look at the pricing!
Hetzner wants 150€ for this server. 3TB disk is 50€ extra. So 200€ for the server per month. This is also about 200$ so 1.6¢ per user and month. This should be very manageable.
Also it doesn’t mean the server only holds 12k users. If the server holds 20k users or more you Look at less than a Cent cost per user and month.
They are already raising 600€ per month via Patron only so 3 months worth per month. If the server gets bigger, more people will probably give money and while it stays a kinda hobby project it should work out fine.
But you are right with something else:
Lemmy currently has no ability to loadbalance over multiple servers for one instance. This will become a Problem in the future, but it is being worked at.Reddit is not a “simpler setup”. Reddit has gigantic amounts of computational resources to throw at things. Resources that make servers like this look like a Raspberry Pi. They’re just much less transparent about how the backend works and what they have.
Was thinking the same thing, is a lemmy instance supposed to be literally a single server instance?
I’m also interested in the answer to this question.
Ruud is rad!!
Hello, i still doesn’t quite grasp about the concept of federation and about how fediverse works.
But does it means that one instance can only run from one server?
Say lemmy.world running on Server A lemmy.ml running on Server B
User can register on whichever they want and can see the post from server A and Server B
But when Server A reach maximum capacity, can Server A scale up or distribute the load to multiple instances?
How can we solve the issue of computing power when more and more users migrate to using this services
Thank you 😀
Sorry if its a dumb question, but the whole Federation concept is still new to me. I created multiple account to log in to beehaw, mastodon, lemmy.world, lemmy.ml at first because i dont know that with one user, i can see other communities from another instances
Optimal would be if users would spread over many servers, instead of all coming to Lemmy.world. But most users don’t fully understand the Federation concept so they think they need to register here so they can see local content?
I think the current server can handle a lot of users. It’s just the software that isn’t ready for it… but that will improve. If ever this server gets too small, next step would be to scale using Kubernetes, but also that requires the software to be better prepared for that.
Hello, after reading all the comments, I realized that I share the same questions (sort of) with the others.
Thank you for replying and clarify things
Cheers Ruud. And thank you 😊
Perhaps having the lemmy main site suggest servers with less load in a dynamic way would help with this. Instance xyz is now recommended on the main page due to having less users. The main problem I see with that is that there are different “themed” and what is suggested may not match up with the user’s preferences and tastes.
Thanks for setting up and managing the instances.
This is already the case I think. But the server must meet certain requirements, including specifically opting into being recommended.
You’re seeing mostly CPU bottlenecks I assume?
What’s your RAM and storage situation looking like?
It does matter where you call home though because beehaw just defederated and there was quite a lot of good content there.
I’m trying to figure out why I even saw this post! I’ve never been to lemmy.world - I’m logged in to (and currently browsing) sh.itjust.works. Not sure why it’s showing me this post.
Gonna take a while to wrap my redditor brain around this stuff!
That’s what we mean when we talk about federation!
All the instances are interconnected (unless they block each other). You can post, vote, comment, and even become a moderator of a community on any other instance.
In many ways, it’s all one big site. In many ways it’s also not, but to the end user who just wants to browse around, it’s not as important as people make it out to be.
There’s some rough edges around community discovery, cross-instance linking, etc. But the devs are working hard on fixing those issues.
I understood that I would see remote (is that the right word?) communities to which I had subscribed. Am I also seeing communities to which my local users have subscribed? I don’t think I’d want that.
There’s a few tabs at the top of the feed (on the site, apps might be different)
“Local” shows all content from communities on your instance.
“All” shows content from all communities on all instances that your instance has “discovered”. Your instance will discover a remote community once at least one member of your instance searches for it and subscribes.
“Subscribed” shows content from communities you’ve subscribed to, both local and remote.
Thank you! That’s tremendously helpful.
Seems like you’ve suddenly got a weight to bare. You’re clearly lifting it. 👍
I hope not all people will go back to reddit as soon as the communities go public again.
The two day blackout was what finally got me to actually look into the fediverse, figure out servers and whatnot, and make an account to try it out. I’ve been meaning to look into it for a while, but the blackout was the push I needed. I’m sure I’m not alone. I’m far more interested in exploring this exciting new space then I am going back to the garbage filled Reddit, even if they miraculously back down on the API changes .
My reddit account was over 10 years old. This is my first comment on Lemmy/Fediverse.
Relate. 12 year account, would like to see this take off. They’re not changing.
I’m more or less getting what I wanted out of reddit out of lemmy already. There are a few teething pains, but overall it reminds me of the nice little community we had at reddit in 2007. It got better and better until about 2012 after the big digg migration where it started to peak and devolve. I would love to relive those first 5 years here again. I don’t miss reddit at all.
I don’t plan on it. RIF was my main way of browsing Reddit so once that goes, that’s pretty much me done. I’ll probably still peruse sysadmin for work purposes, but my Reddit time will become Lemmy time.
I am in a transition period where I still keep Apollo installed, and trying to find enough communities here in order to be somewhat ready for the July 🙈
I have deleted nearly 10 years worth of content and account already. Those leaving should do the same.
I will stay here. Did not have this feeling of internet independence for a very long time. I’m done with Reddit.
I’m just gonna browse both for a while I guess. I know I’m not downloading the official app on my phone though
Wow that was fast.
this is very Reddit-y of you
Redditors made such memes a thing, we’re taking them with us where we go.
When a volunteer can run a server better then a big tech company
unsurprising pikachu face
To be fair the volunteer isn’t trying to squeeze value out of the users to inflate his IPO.
Won’t somebody think about the corporations!
How to contribute? Do you have Patreon?
Thank you for making this happen! Just signed up for a regular donation to help with costs 👍
Just donated $10! Appreciate all the work you all are doing to keep up with the growth.
Like many others, I came from Reddit and was initially hesitant to try it out, but I love this place so much! It really feels like the “worse” parts of Reddit have been skimmed off, and that definitely shows with how nice people seem here! Thank you so much!
Truth is for me as someone who used Reddit for about the last 16 years, it very much feels like the early days of Reddit again.
Which is a very good thing, because that’s what I originally signed up for compared to a metric fuckton of karma farming spam bots.
I just hope it gains enough traction to be sustainable in the long run, especially considering that it’s relying on donations for funding, I believe?
undefined> metric fuckton of karma farming spam bots.
People are hard at work writing bots for lemmy so don’t worry, you’ll be able to enjoy your regular hogwash again really soon.
Personally I think lemmy should go as far out of its way as possible to make bots in any and all forms just about impossible.
Yeah, we can enjoy while it lasts, because with more users more questionable content will come
how nice people seem here
yes! I love the culture of this place so far
Found one russian troll already. Oh well…
Edit: lol, was not referring to OP, it was some world news post comment with chiese username that spread misinformation about russian war in ukraine. I just added my thoughts on the community.
Lesson learned today: never take anything for granted—if there’s a chance to be massively misunderstood, it will eventually happen lol
you can easily block any user by click on the 🚫 sign under their comment, and never have to deal with their bs again
what about that post made you think they were a russian troll?
I think they meant they’ve seen one Russian troll on Lemmy already, not that skidface is a Russian troll.
I … Have to assume so, anyway
Can confirm I am not a russian troll ;)
Thank you very much. The welcome for all us reddit refugees has been really warm and it’s deeply appreciated.
as one of the new people here, awesome!
King Ruud is good to us
For less tech-savvy newbies (like me), in case there is some confusion affecting your urge to engage/donate… My friend gave me a great explanation:
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Lemmy the platform is planet Earth
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“Instances” like lemmy.world, lemmy.ml, beehaw.org, etc. are like the different countries on Earth
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When someone signs up, the user picks one instance to be a part of, like how an Earthling becomes a citizen of a country
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If you register at lemmy.world, that means your home instance/ “home country” is lemmy.world, but you can “travel” to lemmy.ml, another instance / “country”, to check out and subscribe to their community
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When you subscribe to a different instance that’s not your home instance, you can still participate in their content, and other people will be able to see which instance / “country” you’re from
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Each instance can have its own version of the same “subreddit”, so you can have a c/Memes in your home instance that is different from a c/Memes in another instance. But you can subscribe to both separately
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c/[community name] is the naming convention used here I think like r/[subreddit name] on Reddit. If talking about a community in a different instance, it’s c/[community name]@[instance name] so like c/[email protected]
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Donations will help with the cost of running lemmy.world only and not lemmy.ml, beehaw.org, etc.
Someone please correct any of this if any of it is wrong, I’ll happily edit
Is there a way to view C/Memes in all instances at once in aggregate? I don’t want to miss out on what other instances are doing.
Not yet, although there is ongoing discussion about this
I’m new here so I might not be asking the right question. As I understand it there are many subforums one on each instance with the same exact name. Are they all shown at once while browsing? Can they be?
I wasn’t talking about multiforums but that’s good to know too.
There can be multiple communities with the same name, that doesn’t mean there are. Like how [email protected] and [email protected] are the same “name” but a different domain.
So say for example you and your friend start up your own Lemmy instance and decide to make your own community called “Funny” where you can post jokes, without bothering to check if there was already a more popular “Funny” in someone else’s instance. There’s nothing stopping you and now there will be two communities called Funny, but one would be [email protected] and yours would be [email protected]
If your “Funny” gets to be really popular too, then other people might choose to subscribe to both Funny communities, and then posts from both would be in their feed. However they are distinctly seperate and you will continue to own and run yours and lemmy.world would own theirs.
Does that make sense? I know it’s a weird concept when you’re used to unique names in Reddit, but it’s not all that different from r/news and r/worldnews covering similar content but controlled by different people.
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Is one donation method preferred over another? That is to say, is one cheaper than the other?
