With forewarning about a huge influx of users, you know Lemmy.ml will go down. Even if people go to https://join-lemmy.org/instances and disperse among the great instances there, the servers will go down.
Ruqqus had this issue too. Every time there was a mass exodus from Reddit, Ruqqus would go down, and hardly reap the rewards.
Even if it’s not sustainable, just for one month, I’d like to see Lemmy.ml drastically boost their server power. If we can raise money as a community, what kind of server could we get for 100$? 500$? 1,000$?
It’s a single server, Michael. What could it cost, $10?
what kind of server could we get for 100$? 500$? 1,000$?
And how long? Days, Months…?
The site currently runs on the biggest VPS which is available on OVH. Upgrading further would probably require migrating to a dedicated server, which would mean some downtime. Im not sure if its worth the trouble, anyway the site will go down sooner or later if millions of Reddit users try to join.
8 vCore 32 GB RAM😬
2 follow-ups:
- Can we replace Lemmy.ml with Join-lemmy.org when Lemmy.ml is overloaded/down?
- Does LemmyNet have any plans on being Kubernetes (or similar horizontal scaling techniques) compatible?
Can we replace Lemmy.ml with Join-lemmy.org when Lemmy.ml is overloaded/down?
I dont think so, when the site is overloaded then clients cant reach it at all.
Does LemmyNet have any plans on being Kubernetes (or similar horizontal scaling techniques) compatible?
It should be compatible if someone sets it up.
You could configure something like a Cloudflare worker to throw up a page directing users elsewhere whenever healthchecks failed.
Then cloudflare would be able to spy on all the traffic so thats not an option.
spy on all the traffic
That’s…not how things work. Everyone has their philosophical opinions so I won’t attempt to argue the point, but if you want to handle scale and distribution, you’re going to have to start thinking differently, otherwise you’re going to fail when load starts to really increase.
Cloudflare does have the ability to spy on traffic though, they hold SSL keys.
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Is it running in a single docker container or is it spread out across multiple containers? Maybe with
docker-machineor kubernetes with horizontal scaling, it could absorb users without issue - well, except maybe cost. OVH has managed kubernetes.Do you have the frontend a DB serving in the same VPS? If so it would be a great time to split them. Likewise if you DB is running in a VPS, you’re likely suffering from significant steal from the hypervisor so you would benefit from switching to a dedicated box. My API calls saw a speedup of 10x just from switching from a VPS DB to a Dedicated Box DB.
I just checked OVH VPS offers and they’re shit! Even at 70 Eur dedicated on hetzner, you would gain more than double those resources without steal. I would recommend switching your DB ASAP for immediate massive gains.
If you’re wondering why you should listen to me, I built and run https://aihorde.net and are handling about 5K concurrent connections currently.
Hetzner is very strict about piracy so thats not an option. And now is almost weekend so I wont have time for a migration. Anyway there are plenty of other instances in case lemmy.ml goes down.
Edit: I also wouldnt know which size of dedicated server to choose. No matter what I pick, it will get overloaded again after a week or two.
Even if you choose Hetzner, it won’t even know it has anything to do with piracy because it will be just hosting the DB, and nobody will know where your DB is. That fear is overblown.
Likewise believe me a dedicated server is night and day from a VPS.
