While it seems a bit cliche to talk about ~the server~, there are hundreds of Lemmy instances out there and you never know if the server is just someone’s crappy old laptop. How the server is set up is also relevant, as it has a direct impact on your experience.
Server info
lemdit.com is running inside of a VM, on a self-hosted server that is located in New Zealand. Self-hosted means this server is a physical machine that sits a few meters away from me, not a virtual server provided by a 3rd party.
The Lemmy instance currently has 8 Xeon cores and 128GB of RAM allocated to it, which is complete overkill for the forseeable future. The host machine has 44 cores / 88 threads, 512 GB of RAM and 10Gb NICs, so there is plenty of room to grow.
The server is connected to the world via gigabit fibre. Due to how far New Zealand is from the rest of the world, Lemdit may not feel as snappy to you if you’re in the US or the EU, for example, but it certainly shouldn’t feel slow either.
Service continuity
While I don’t live in a datacentre, I take some precautions to maximize resilience and uptime. The database is backed up daily and the VM image is also backed up periodically, which means restoring Lemdit is relatively easy and machine agnostic. I have a secondary server with similar specs that I can switch to if the primary server dies.
The server is connected to a UPS and there is a back-up petrol generator on hand in case of power failure.
There are some things that are outside of my means, such as having a redundant Internet connection. I’m also away from home often and won’t always be immediately available to deal with events.
In general though our uptime track record is solid and you can expect Lemdit to be dependable. Reddit has had more outages than my self-hosted Libreddit instance has, for example.
Instance settings
This is how our Lemmy instance is configured and what that means:
- Open registration:
enabled- Anyone can create an account by signing up, we do not require registration applications. - E-mail verification:
enabled- You will need to verify your e-mail address before your account is activated. - User community creation:
enabled- Users are able to create new communities themselves, without Admin intervention. - Downvotes:
enabled- Posts and comments can be downvoted as well as upvoted. - NSFW:
disabled- We don’t allow NSFW content on this server. - Image upload limit:
20MB- This is the maximum image size permitted on this server.
Version history
17 June 2023
- Initial release
02 July 2023
- Added “Instance settings” (moved from the home page side panel).
- Added host machine specifications.
- Added service continuity details
18 July 2023
- Removed “Number of instances defederated: 1 - This is the number of other Fediverse instances we have blocked.” Keeping a track of this here is redundant.
19 July 2023
- Added Version history for transparency
Feels pretty quick from Florida, USA! Curious what led you to have such a powerful computer sitting around?
I’m glad to hear!
I enjoy self hosting useful things, it’s my hobby and it makes me feel like I’m giving something back. Occasionally you can find a great deal on used hardware, so I’ve snapped up some pieces here and there.
Large companies are constantly decomissioning servers when they go out of support from the manufacturer. There’s usually nothing wrong with the hardware and it’s still very relevant today. For my purposes, it being out of support doesn’t really affect me either. :)