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Tiff @reddthat.com

GitHub - LemmyNet/lemmy-ansible: A docker deploy for ansible

So you want to know how we host lemmy?

I bought a server for 12 months, cloned this repository, edited the smtp details, modified the host vars, and ran the deploy!

The lemmy stack uses nginx, docker, and certbot. Inside docker it runs, lemmy, lemmy-ui, pictrs, postgresql, and postfix.

For our CDN we are using the "dreaded" cloudflare for caching. Here's a pretty picture of our analytics for the past 7 days (the whole life time of reddthat.com):

Incase you hate me for using cloudflare, don't worry I don't like using it either, but it's free for the time being. We are planning to move to BunnyCDN once we become funded. We've enabled Strict SSL to ensure all communications are secure. We also allow Tor users to access the site, and have our cloudflare "security" setting to minimal.

We are using UptimeRobot for our status page; status.reddthat.com.

Emails are hosted via my Mailcow instance.

The git repo linked here has been forked to a git repo and I'll be looking at making some changes in the coming days. Mainly to add the nginx configuration to be part of the code as well. It will then be completely under code, not just partly under code as it is now.
This is a gitea instance utilising gitea_runners, so once I get that done, I'll be creating gitea actions for:

  • Adding renovate to automatically check for new versions of the docker files and notify of passing tests
  • Once the PR is merged, automatically deploy it.

& that's about it.

Tiff

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7 comments

  • Wow! Thanks for posting this. I was wondering how you got this set up. I can't help but think this is expensive to run. If you have time, I'm really curious how you plan to sustain the service economically. This has to cost money to run and I suspect those costs will increase as more people join.

    I totally understand if you're too busy just getting this thing bootstrapped to respond. Thanks again for setting up this instance.

    • We have an Open Collective which shows our current expenses and goals. The link should be on the sidebar on the main page. (I need to put in our server expenses thanks for the reminder)

      I have a great relationship with our current infrastructure host as I have other infrastructure hosted with them as well, so I got a great deal.

      Our current costs are A$120 per year for a 2 core, 4gb VPS with 60gb of space.
      Even after a week I can see this server may not be adequate for our needs, mainly in the space department. As more and more pictures are added, we will need to move pictrs off to its own server at some point but that is easy and I have a good idea on loadbalancing it.

      Another option depending on funds is to migrate the images to an object storage solution such as Backblaze B2, or wasabi. I am reluctant to do that due to the amount of $ it can waste on storage, the more storage the more expensive it gets per month and I cannot foot the bill forever.

      These are the hard costs of what happens when people not only join our server but just federate with others. I think for some federated content we store a thumbnail on our server as well.
      I am not doing this currently for money, and as you can see a breaking even point is within our reach.
      If we have 4 people donate a coffee a month we would be funded! If we end up having 40 people contributing a coffee a month that is a dedicated server in a colocation and I could buy an 8TB drive and send it to them!

      There are so many options, but they all come with a cost. I can do a lot on a shoe string budget as I do that for $work on a daily basis :P

      Cheers
      Tiff

7 comments