Where it stands now how much does it cost to keep this server running, and how can we help with that?

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If I were to do some rough math I'd say it would cost about $300/CAD per month.
My goal is once we are approved to start accepting donations that I can purchase dedicated hardware for this instance. I'd get a used server at about $2300 which would be sufficient a good amount of extra users and through it into its own dedicated shared colo at about $100/month. Factor in about $300-400 a year for drive replacements and we are left with $2300 / 12 month= 191.66 + 100/month for the shared 1u colo + a budget of $400 for drive failures throughout the year $33/month. 191.66 + 100 + 33 = $324.66/month for the first year dropping to about $133 per month after the first 12 months. It's worth noting that this method would give us double the amount of resources and quite a bit of extra storage.
Ideally we don't keep this instance on a single server forever and start to think about spreading it over multiple hosts at or after around 100K users (or less if the number of active users is high).
If someone wanted to host an instance they would not need to allocate as much resources as I have to this instance and depending on how active the instance gets could run off something a lot less powerful.
- I really appreciate the information, it's very interesting to me. Given that you have a fairly specific price in mind for a server, what kind of hardware are you thinking of?
  
  Something with Dual CPUs, at least 128GB ram, dual 750W PSUs, hardware raid (12Gbps) and 8 x 2.5" SAS/SATA slots for SSD Drives on a raid 10
- I love the transparency. I think we can easily reach that mark. Whenever you get approved for donations we'll be ready. I've got at least tree fiddy in my account
  
  I agree. Thanks for keeping us updated and explaining what kind of money needs to be spend.
  I’ll be more than happy to chip in.
  edited because Thelsim doesn’t know how to proofread
- Thank you for the money and time you put into making this instance work and keeping it working. I imagine the responsibility that comes from all this is both a joy and a burden.
- Really nice breakdown thanks for sharing! Totally reasonable goals to reach too.
- This is exactly what I was after thanks for the good rundown! Also thanks for all the time money and effort spent on all of this
- What are you doing for backups?
  
  That's the "drive replacements" part I believe
- Have you considered the implications of hardware failure on uptime? And where the cost to maintain a physical hardware will come from? What about scaling requirements?
  I'm not a network engineer, but I've been involved in the corporate argument of Cloud vs On-Prem. hosting for years now. The costs always come out better for Cloud when factoring in other indirect costs like facilities and labor.
  Granted it's always been on the scale of hundreds of millions to billions of dollars, and I haven't run the numbers on smaller requirements. I just wouldn't want to expose additional points of failure in return for slightly lower monthly costs.
  
  I think the cost always come out better for cloud for a given reliability level. But this is a volunteer run thing, so we won't mind if there is some more important downtime than on reddit or Twitter. I really do think that if your objective is not reaching 100% uptime but cost reduction, then on prem really becomes the cheapest option
  
  He mentioned colo, so it sounds like he's already decided against on-prem.

Major performance problems have been fixed in Lemmy in the past 48 hours, with more pending in the next 24. The latest code on GitHub is far better than 0.17.4/0.18.0 in terms of hammering the server.

There is a pinned post on this community. It reads:
Firstly, the issue of donations. Since the inception of this instance, your most frequent request has been the ability to make contributions to support my initiative. While initially, I had never intended to accept donations, I’ve come to realize the value this brings in ensuring our platform’s sustainability. In response to your requests, within the next week, I will be introducing several options for those of you who wish to donate. I want to emphasize that these donations are entirely optional and will directly support our instance’s operational necessities - dedicated hardware, colocation fees, email services, and more.
- How dare you call out my inability to read haha
  I'm still curious about the actual price it runs to keep up, like if someone wanted to host an instance
  
  haha I thought it was a good question!

Been looking for a donate link for this specific instance as well.

The last update about donations said that they’re coming “soon”
- Yeah looks like someone commented in that thread 8 days ago with no answer.
  I'd donate as well, as this has become my main social media hub for now.
  I assume the costs are not too bad yet or theDude would be quicker to get it setup?
  I also want to say that I'd be fine donating some small amounts (like 25-50 bucks) without any book keeping or reports on costs for the short term. Longer term that stuff is nice to have but I understand even a trustworthy operation can take a bit to set that stuff up.
  
  The server space is collocated and multi-purpose so it’s less expensive than renting a machine with as much power as it has. If we all donated the equivalent to Reddit Premium that would be a very good way to sustain the platform financially

I'm hoping for an Open Collective page like a lot of instances have done.
- This is what I'm currently working towards. Waiting for a Fiscal host to accept our application!
  
  That's awesome! I appreciate the update.

42 comments