this post was submitted on 02 Jul 2023
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Discussion about the aussie.zone instance itself

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submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by lodion@aussie.zone to c/meta@aussie.zone
 

In the interest of transparency, I'll be aiming to make a post at the start of each month detailing the income and expenses for the prior month as it relates to aussie.zone.

A huge thank you to everyone that has donated on my Ko-Fi page. It is because of your support that aussie.zone will continue to operate.

Income

Net donations received for June 2023 was ~$335 AUD. ๐ŸŽ‰๐ŸŽ‰ This is incredibly generous of everyone, especially given the current cost of living pressures we're all facing. Thank you.

When I first launched the Ko-fi page, I hadn't realised it defaulted to USD. So some donors may have unwittingly donated in USD. My apologies, I did send an email to all donors up until that point to make them aware.

A special thank you to those that have commited to contribute monthly. This is massively appreciated!

Expenses

Expenses this month were OVH hosting ($33) and Porkbun domain registration ($9). Wasabi object storage is at the end of its first month being free, and will incur costs in a week or so.

Balance

$335 - $42 = ~$293 surplus at current costs. However given the recent surge in users and their associated resource utilisation on the server, I'm expecting to upgrade the VPS in the next few weeks.

THANK YOU

I'd like to recognise and thank donors in some way. Lemmy does not currently have anything built in to recognise them that I'm aware of. I'm open to ideas. One perk I'd like to offer is an @aussie.zone email address redirect. Any donors that would like to take this up, please hit me up ๐Ÿ˜€

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[โ€“] niknah@aussie.zone 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Have you considered Oracle Cloud? They give you a very generous freebie tier. Thanks for being transparent.

[โ€“] ososalsosal@aussie.zone 4 points 1 year ago

Oracle

Not even once

That said, I'll look into that free tier.

[โ€“] lodion@aussie.zone 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I've heard horror stories of Oracle free tier services being shutdown without notice. And I've not checked, but I doubt their traffic/bandwidth allowances are cost effective for a lemmy instance.

[โ€“] ticoombs@reddthat.com 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Happens all the time to my personal build servers. Working one minute then all offline. Part of being the free tier and the only worthwhile option is the ARM server and Lemmy's automatic arm builds are currently not working. They also "recover" unused services, so you have to have ~10% CPU usage otherwise they will turn your servers off because they are "unused".

But 10TB/month... Is certainly nice.

[โ€“] lodion@aussie.zone 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

10TB/month for free... I wouldn't have any faith that will persist long term.

[โ€“] ticoombs@reddthat.com 1 points 1 year ago

10TB may be free, but as soon as you use 1byte over that, they'll probably bill you, make you sign a contract, and force you into using oracle products for the next decade ๐Ÿคฃ

[โ€“] niknah@aussie.zone 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I've had no problems with them for 2 years now. Except once, when they had changed the IP address once without notice. Never had anything turned off, I am using <10% CPU.

[โ€“] lodion@aussie.zone 1 points 1 year ago

For a personal project, brilliant. For something with close to 1500 users now... I'll stay clear ๐Ÿ™‚

[โ€“] ticoombs@reddthat.com 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

I was looking at the dedi-options for @reddthat. OVH has a sale right now for APAC dedi's. https://www.ovhcloud.com/en/bare-metal/rise/rise-apac-1/ - $40.99USD/month (40% off).

PS. the wasabi object store is amazing compared to backblaze. Already moved off! ๐ŸŠ

[โ€“] lodion@aussie.zone 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Yeah, we're not at that stage quite yet ๐Ÿ™‚
Also that price requires a 12 month contract, and only has SATA storage. NVME + no commit is ~$70 USD, substantially more than even my next planned VPS upgrade.

edit: haha glad you like Wasabi, I should have got a referral ๐Ÿ˜‰

[โ€“] ticoombs@reddthat.com 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Gah!! It's always USD. We need our own $ sign

[โ€“] hitmyspot@aussie.zone 1 points 1 year ago

Just flip it 180

[โ€“] palarith@aussie.zone 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

undefined> the wasabi object store is amazing compared to backblaze.

They are, but the 3 month min charge is annoying

[โ€“] ticoombs@reddthat.com 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Na, it's not 3 months (anymore?) Just a minimum of $6 USD.

[โ€“] palarith@aussie.zone 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)
[โ€“] ticoombs@reddthat.com 1 points 1 year ago

I think they must have updated it since you last read it. As it no longer says that, but just says you are billed for 1TB regardless. Yeah for personal usage it's certainly not the best option!

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