The plans are moving to pull the plug from this instance and migrate to a new one.
Running Mastodon really isn't fun anymore. I need 100GB of space on an S3 bucket just to store a cache that I can never delete, and 6GB of RAM constantly allocated by Redis or sidekiq just to run an instance with me and 3-4 more active users. There must be a better way.
I have registered a new domain, configured the DNS, and I'm currently toying with Akkoma to see if it meets my needs. I may also toy with CalcKey before taking any decisions.
It may be challenging for me to immediately replicate all the feature of this instance on a new one (especially if I opt for Pleroma/Akkoma, as I'm far more familiar with Ruby than with Elixir/Nix), but it may be a good opportunity to experiment with some new shiny toys.
Of course, I'll personally reach out to the active users on this instance to check if they need any assistance with migration / data dumps before it shutting down.
@blacklight I would be surprised if there is not some level of consolidation at some point, unless a community is not federating with the rest, their hosting costs will grow with the size of the fediverse, rather than its own size, so small instances will be less efficient.
I have no experience with hosting mastodon, but the concept of a cache that you can never delete seems weird, surely things not accessed in a long time should be fine?
@tshirtman@blacklight If you look at #Mastodon instances that accept donations and show their costs, it is quite easy to see that their hosting costs do increase significantly the longer they exist and the bigger they are. I recently saw one instance project their 2024 costs at €27000. That's a whole lot of money for hosting a website.
Having ran instances with a few dozen members, I've always been able to just use a €5/mo VPS somewhere, and never run into issues, simply by using better software, in my case #Pleroma. If I were to set up a new instance today I'd most likely look into #Akkoma first, too.
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