Forum host upgrade - proposal

[Hauke Mehrtens]

On 8/12/24 22:11, Stijn Tintel wrote:
> 
> On 8/12/24 15:33, Robert Marko wrote:
>> On Sat, 10 Aug 2024 at 17:54, Ted Hess <thess at kitschensync.net> wrote:
>>> Hi all -
>>>
>>> Those of you who visit the forum have probably noticed its, sometimes
>>> extreme, sluggishness over the last several months. Since April, I have
>>> worked on and applied a number of attempts at tuning, cleanup and
>>> storage re-arrangement to try and alleviate these issues. As best as I
>>> can determine, we have have just simply exceeded the capacity of the
>>> current Droplet CPU and RAM. To upgrade to a system with 2X CPU/RAM
>>> (4vCPU/8GB -> 8vCPU/16GB) will increase cost from $48/mo to $96-112/mo.
>>> The difference in cost is a "Regular Intel" vs "Premium Intel"
>>> processors. The Premium (latest Xeon) option will provide enhanced NVMe
>>> SSDs which would improve DB performance (a bit). I think it would be
>>> worth $112/mo for maximal impact on the responsiveness of the forum. AMD
>>> vs Intel - cost is the same. AMD may be slightly higher GHz.
>>>
>>> Are there any objections / reasons why we shouldn't go ahead and do the
>>> upgrade. There are a couple of methods available however, the down-time
>>> will probably be 1-3hrs. if no problems. This isn't the first system
>>> upgrade we have done, so I expect no issues.
>>>
>>> If any of you wish to see some of the forum performance stats, I can
>>> post another message with numbers and personal observations. A quick
>>> overview of what our daily forum activity looks like:
>>>
>>> * Serving 120-160K page views. (about 25% attributed to crawlers - a
>>> different discussion)
>>> * 6-8K mail messages generated
>>> * ~1100 User visits (signed-in)
>>> * ~200 engaged users (liked or posted)
>>> * ~500 new posts
>>>
>>> Footnote on bandwidth usage... (DO charges bandwidth on aggregate
>>> Droplet use)
>>> Proposed Droplet upgrade will add 3TB to our total.
>>> I don't have per-Droplet stats, but last month we transmitted ~29TB of
>>> our 25TB allowance. A $40 overage cost.
>> Hi Ted,
>> I am for upgrading the droplet as forum is probably the main point of
>> interaction
>> in the OpenWrt community.
>>
>> But, like others pointed out, we maybe should look for a more 
>> affordable host
>> then DO as they are quite expensive.
> 
> We use DO because they sponsor us USD 5000 to use their services. If you 
> look at the current costs, upgrading another droplet will cause us to 
> use up the USD 5000 before they expire. Please keep that in mind before 
> doing anything that will increase cost.
> 
> Stijn

Hi,

I think it is fine if we invest some money into the server for the 
forum. From my point of view it is fine to upgrade the server from 
4vCPU/8GB -> 8vCPU/16GB for an additional ~70$ per month.

We should consider to move some resources to other providers like 
Hetzner, but we can do this later.


Hauke