Forum host upgrade - proposal

[Stijn Tintel]

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