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Fri, 07 Jan 2022 20:31:06 +0100

adminsforum@hubzilla.org

Wiego wrote the following post Fri, 07 Jan 2022 20:31:05 +0100

What are the average hosting cost per Hubzilla channel?

I was wondering if there are any stats regarding how much storage and bandwidth an average social media channel that is using Hubzilla needs per month? e.g. What are the average hosting cost per Hubzilla channel?

Any insights are greatly welcomed!

show all 13 comments

Fri, 07 Jan 2022 20:53:07 +0100

hEARt PhoniX

tobias@hubzilla.rocks

As understandable as this question is, I find it hard to answer. But first no, there are no stats. Because ... it all depends. You could open a channel and create just a few text posts for some other channel on the same hub. You could have 100 connections and a lot of incoming messages but never post yourself. You could use a webcam to automatically upload and post high res photos. You could connwct to 40 high volume RSS feeds. You could use Hubzilla to share your 30 selfmade electropunk albums from 20 years ago.
I have got a hub that is private only and uses about 105G storage / 3G database. Another one about 9G / 1,8G database. Zotlabs.org uses about 500MB file storage and 3G database. Another hub that is a few years old uses about 1G disk space and 3,6G database.
It depends.
Network traffic obviously depends upon how many connections you have got, how active they are, what they post, share. Do you have a clone of your channel and aync everything to another hub?

I guess you see that there is no valid and solid answer.
I am sorry.

Sat, 08 Jan 2022 00:27:46 +0100

Grouchy

grouchy@hub.grouchysysadmin.com

@Wiego

What will go wrong here?

Hello,

There are few questions I'd ask before starting a project with 10K users.

1. That's sixty different hubs to administrator. Are all sixty people competent system administrators? What happens when one hub is hacked and users private data is exposed?

2. Are all the hubs located on different networks? If some are on the same network, or same host, then an infrastructure issue could take out multiple hubs.

3. Are all the hubs using the default public realm? Then you have to account for potential traffic from every other Hub out there.

4. Are the hubs going to be private, or open to the public? A public hub can attract unwanted users, which you'll need to manage.

5. Do you have legal representation to deal with the various content and privacy laws? (DMCA, CCPA, GDPR, insert laws from country of choice)

I'm not trying to discourage you, just point out some pitfalls of running a large network. The amount of skill, labor, and time required can add up quick.

Here are my statistics on my private hub as a reference. But as @hEARt PhoniX indicated, usage can be highly variable and depends on a number of factors.

Server
Average memory in use: 300/400MB
Average processes: 4 to 10
Average disk space: 5GB

Hub:
Connections: 8
Channels: 1
Time alive: Since January 2019.

Sat, 08 Jan 2022 17:22:12 +0100

citc

citc@zotum.net

The main thing is that hubzilla is not yet compatible with itself. Different hubs, different versions, content is not shared successfully. Each programmer has an ego, unable to manage.
See:
#^https://wedistribute.org/2017/10/got-zot%e2%80%8a-%e2%80%8amike-macgirvin-on-building-your-own-apps-and-protocols/
#^https://labonneheure.ch/item/a385d942-f1f2-4786-9eb5-0927d62ee834

Sat, 08 Jan 2022 18:47:17 +0100

citc

citc@zotum.net

If programmers do not respect a _participant's_ freedom _not_ to use latest, buggy software. That is their freedom. To introduce new software that has not been tested and expect hub administrators to pay...no.

Mike is entitled to do to his freedom. It is evident that today's programmers do not share such vision.

Software without "backwards compatibility", is poor. Ignored bug reports give a good impression of true priorities: endless new features

Sat, 08 Jan 2022 19:24:44 +0100

citc

citc@zotum.net

If compatibility cannot be maintained between hubzilla hubs, the original question will not be answered with accuracy.

Sun, 09 Jan 2022 10:46:20 +0100

RockyIII

rocky3@im.allmendenetz.de

Besides of theory you may talk to @Mark Nowiasz who runs a hub with ~ 900 accounts.

Also @muppeth is intetesting to talk to... He tries to run hub.disroot for a lage community and is struggleling a bit doing so...

There are no big HZ Servers as you can see in the Mastodon world with thousands oft accounts with thousands of followers...

The proof that HZ is working also on such a scale is not jet given

HZ is much better for small and selfhosted hubs which is even a much better way to buit a true dezentrelized network

So for 10.000 people you better plan with more than just 60 hubs

Sun, 09 Jan 2022 11:02:11 +0100

Witcraft (Hubzilla)

witcraft@hubzilla.fediversum.de

Is Zap easier to scale? I'm thinking to promote Zotware to education institutions, and even medium colleges
can have severally thousand users.

Sun, 09 Jan 2022 13:09:44 +0100

Mark Nowiasz

buckaroo@hub.netzgemeinde.eu

Basically it's impossible to answer your question. There are a lot of variables to consider:
- Are the channels really active/connected to a lot of other channes? In this case you need to consider tuning your database (lots of RAM, SSD don't even think about conventional disks - , and so on.)
- Are those channels posting lots and lots of binaries/images? Then you need a large filesystem

I give you some stats for hub.netzgemeinde.eu (approx 900 Users):

- VM: 6 CPUs, 32 GB RAM, about 600 GB SSD.
- Database: approx 80 GB, about 257 queries/seconds (average)
- Filesystem: Since there are snapshots and backups it's not easy to tell. The store directory uses about 15 GB.
- CPU Load: rather low, below 1

Ah, and I'm using Redis for session store. Otherwise the (database) load would go sky high.

Furthermore you have to consider backup/restore (both database and filesystem) and monitoring, which also might increase costs.

So it's not easy to determine how much hosting costs there are. For example, I use a seperate machine for monitoring, backups finally go to an external, encrypted disks at home and so on.

Sun, 09 Jan 2022 17:19:42 +0100

citc

citc@zotum.net

Consideration should be given to long term sustainability. Is it realistic (statistically) to find a number of people within this group with sufficient IT and management skills to share knowledge, recruit future hub administrators? Or would it be better to ask people in the group to donate enough for a local IT company to do the administration?

When bugs appear that affect people's ability to communicate, what would be their expectations, in terms of time to fix errors.

To repeat, even though extant programmers deny, it has been personally observed that content is not distributed equally across hubzilla hub servers, as well as the rest of the fediverse. Suggest that you please test behaviour yourself. Create multiple accounts, different hub servers, different software versions. Make connections with your multiple accounts, create content and evaluate your observations.

Witcraft:

It would be interesting to see integration of pedagogical content services such as 'moodle', with hubzilla, MIT 'unhangout'!

Sun, 09 Jan 2022 19:49:20 +0100

Grouchy

grouchy@hub.grouchysysadmin.com

@Wiego

What kind of systems can be put in place or are already in place to get priority (commercial) fixes / improvements / support?

Mario accepts payment for Hubzilla development time. See #^https://hub.somaton.com/channel/mario

There may be others, though I don't know any off hand.

Sun, 09 Jan 2022 20:58:02 +0100

citc

citc@zotum.net

A return to the critical conclusion. Good quality project management is vital if ordinary people are going to be asked to pay for IT support. Reliance upon one, two, a few etc. people is probably going to be considered high risk. It is suggested to look at extant bugs, look at "new features" introduced recently and ask: "what is the decision management process?".

Hubzilla is good software that needs greater participation to improve general management.

Sun, 09 Jan 2022 23:03:54 +0100

oRx-Qx pirateradio

michal@node9.org

@Wiego

Depends on if the internet infrastructure is safe and how it is controlled. So if you setup hubs with different providers on different places and have some admins (linux/php) it can be OK. I would not reccomend setting up much more than 10 hubs, because if you are lacking admins, it would be unmanageable. And the network you design needs coordination.

If those people really cannot admin linux, or the infrastructure can be centrally censored, consider using peer-to-peer networks like Briar, Tox, Jami, Retroshare, which everybody has on their computer/phone and there is no servers. #^https://pad.vvvvvvaria.org/peertopeer

Otherwise hubzilla is nice for having restricted channels and maybe when you start using them you will not want anything else. I run some nodes on VPN, so the hub (Raspberry) can be connected anywhere on ethernet cable with DHCP and it will connect on VPN to mother server which has public IP on internet and redirects domains traffic to target local servers. So you can take the box and go and connect it in another city. This servers backup to mother server, which should be kept safe or for big network make 2 or 3 of them at different providers and each can have 4-5 child hubs manageable centrally because on VPNs they have static internal IPs and exactly same setup. This is used in "internet of things" and you can deploy many hubs and possibly have monitoring webapp to see their status etc.

Mon, 10 Jan 2022 11:17:26 +0100

RockyIII

rocky3@im.allmendenetz.de

Retroshare is working just fine if you have a defined group of people - so if the people do know each other already and don´t have to fine each other got for Retroshare because you don´t need any servers