I’m wondering, what resources does Lemmy need? For a small instance (let’s say, me and some friends) or a large instance (think Lemmy.ml or Lemmy.world or the like…).

Also, where do y’all host your instances?

(posted here after I got directed to this community when I asked it in !lemmy_support@lemmy.ml )

  • Tiff@reddthat.com
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    1 year ago

    I did a semi in-depth post on setting it all up here: https://reddthat.com/post/19103

    To give you an idea of resources:

    • 2 core
      • current usage: 20%
    • 4g ram
      • current usage: 1.5-2gb

    Database: 6.8gb Pictures: 13gb

    We also use CloudFlare for CDN, as since the majority of connections was web sockets and POST requests it acts as a CDN for all our media.

    141 active users, 667 users, 59 Communities, 530 Posts, 1.49K Comments

    CPU and RAM are well below problem numbers and will continue to do so for these numbers.

    The biggest problem for me is the picture files. Not only do you have to keep all the pictures your users upload, but also all the federated pictures as well! Probably the biggest challenge people that federate.

    Since pictrs (since 0.4) now has object storage support, we can migrate to a S3 capable storage finally.
    As we have only been online for 2 weeks… the database will grow fast, but object storage grows even faster!

    • 2 weeks: 6gb
    • 20 weeks: 60gb
    • 60 weeks: 180gb

    If the database gets that big every instance is going to have problems. The database in its current form has inefficiencies that the devs know about and are eventually working towards fixing.


    Lemmy world posted what their server specs are, but they have had problems and scaled out their hardware because they knew they would keep their doors open.
    https://lemmy.world/post/75556 - 32Core 128GB ram.
    But IMHO it’s complete overkill. But it might not be for their database, considering they have 7.5k active users, which is 50x what I am dealing with.

    • infamousbelgian@lemmy.mlOP
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      Wow, thnx for the info. I do see db issues, even for small, semi personal, instances. That might become one of the biggest issues I think.

      Where are you hosted? At home or via a provider/datacenter?

      • Tiff@reddthat.com
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        Yeah VPS provider. No way I’d host it at home. Because like I said, you host pictures of all instances you are federated against.
        Plus bandwidth. My server averages 1MBs and that is with CloudFlare. Couldn’t imagine the bandwidth needed for a non-cdn enabled site. Especially a big one