Proposal: increase our Tech Working Group monthly infrastructure spend to ~€150
Update (2022-11-25): this proposal is superseded by https://www.loomio.com/p/PrfjuJAv/proposal-assign-a-250-monthly-discretionary-budget-to-the-tech-working-group, which takes into account feedback by the community.
Hi there!
We are discussing scalability and reliability strategy in the Tech Working Group this week, after the great work by @protean which brought us to the latest Mastodon version safely.
We have located two servers in Hetzner under auction that would let us augment and replace Runko, our current server with hardware from ~2013. To lease them would signify an extra expense of <€100 monthly:
Once they are set up, we could likely retire Runko (with their aging hardware) and save those ~40€/mo if we want that -- or replace it with newer hardware at a similar price, keeping our monthly server spend in the €150 range.
@Nathan Schneider, we discussed having a discretionary budget elsewhere -- do you think this proposal needs more details and a consultation with the community or do you feel comfortable approving it? Moving fast would enable us to start working on balancing the current load better, and prepare us to grow the instance further if we want to do that and the opportunity arises. But I'm unsure what the right way forward it.
@Ian Smith @Bo Jeanes among others from the TWG reviewed so far, review of the rest of the working groups and the wider community is of course very welcome :)
Will Murphy
Thu 24 Nov 2022 3:08AM
150/month is entirely reasonable for a service of our size and represents 15% of our current open collective income
Geraldo Fernandez (@[email protected]
Thu 24 Nov 2022 3:08AM
I very much support the proposal, but it seems like it might not be clear that members of the TWG all feel this is the right way to go yet. May be preferable to take more time to consider, refine the proposal/process & possibly address the discretionary fund matter and/or potential partnerships with MayFirst first. Would support the proposal if these issues are worked out to make sure it actually represents the desired course of action from the TWG at this time, or a refined proposal is made.
Ana Ulin
Thu 24 Nov 2022 3:08AM
Voting "no" because I don't understand why this proposal is marked as "urgent", and there doesn't seem to be clarity that the TWG agrees on this direction.
Boris Mann
Thu 24 Nov 2022 3:08AM
We should make sure there is a working buffer that might be even higher than this amount. We’re onboarding more people and seeing more traffic, it’s good to have this in place so that Service Döner degrade for members new and old.
Shauna Gordon-McKeon
Thu 24 Nov 2022 3:08AM
This all sounds very reasonable to me, but I don't know enough to actually vote on this, so I'm abstaining. It also seems like there may be some disagreement among the people who this most affects, which seems not ideal.
Erik Moeller
Thu 24 Nov 2022 3:08AM
I'm in favor of increasing the budget promptly, to give the TWG flexibility to make decisions that it agrees to make to manage increased demand.
Scott Jenson
Thu 24 Nov 2022 3:08AM
Seems like the extra spend for the huge increase in new users is warrented
Django
Thu 24 Nov 2022 3:08AM
Changing my vote to disagree, considering this proposal doesn't seem to have had consensus of the Tech Working Group, and that "auctions" are ongoing. It might be best to bring forward a whole new proposal once the TWG has reached consensus.
Ben Price
Thu 24 Nov 2022 3:08AM
Having read the discussion I agree enough in principle with the idea to support it, but I share the reservations about making this an 'Urgent' all-member vote. There ought to be a better way of handling these kind of decisions.
Billy Smith
Thu 24 Nov 2022 3:08AM
The market for computer hardware is a Dutch Auction. Work out what you want to do, choose the appropriate specs for the machine you need for the tasks, and then wait till the price falls to the level that it's within your budget. Buying on impulse means that you're not getting a bargain.