Here is the CPU usage graph for the last 24 hours of the FediMeteo VM. A full 24 hours, during which a huge number of people are connecting, helped by the traction gained from being among the top stories on Hacker News and Lobsters, as well as the many shares across the Fediverse.

RAM usage? Active, around 450 MB. Then there is cache, ARC, and so on. But in practice, zero swap in use after days of uptime.

39 jails running, 39 snac instances, nginx serving the homepage, and HAProxy. HAProxy caching enabled. ZFS snapshots every 15 minutes, backups via zfs send and receive every hour. The same hourly schedule applies to the recalculation of cities, countries, and followers for the homepage.

All of this on a 4 euro per month FreeBSD VM.

If anyone has doubts about the quality and efficiency of FreeBSD, this is the data to show.

#FediMeteo #FreeBSD #RunBSD #IT #SysAdmin

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Time series graph showing CPU usage percentage over roughly 24 hours. The x axis represents time from about 13:00 to 12:00 the next day, and the y axis shows CPU usage from 0 to 100 percent. CPU usage fluctuates mostly between 15 and 35 percent, with periodic rises during daytime and early morning hours. Several short spikes reach around 45 to 55 percent, and one brief peak climbs to about 60 percent. Usage drops to lower levels, around 10 to 20 percent, during late evening and early morning periods. Overall, the graph shows moderate, variable CPU load with occasional sharp peaks.

In the past few days FediMeteo seemed to be having some performance trouble. I dug into it and only found minor issues, until I realised the VM itself had fallen off a cliff. After several reboots it became clear that both bandwidth and I/O latency had dropped to absurd levels. I suspect the provider slapped a cap on it.

So I took the chance to move everything to another VM and provider, still at 4 euro per month. And starting today, forecasts will be delivered straight from Italy. The performance jump feels like going from a storm to clear skies.

FediMeteo’s mission goes on. More countries are coming (stay tuned!) and we will keep aiming to serve everything from a 4 euro VM. I do have powerful hardware available, but proving that the project can run on tiny resources is still part of the mission.

#FediMeteo #FediMeteoAnnouncements #FediMeteoServices #VM #RunBSD #FreeBSD

https://it-notes.dragas.net/2025/02/26/fedimeteo-how-a-tiny-freebsd-vps-became-a-global-weather-service-for-thousands/

#FediMeteo #Fediverse #FreeBSD #RunBSD #Hosting #ITNotes #Networking #NoteHUB #Server #Snac #Snac2 #Social #Web

Some technical details for those interested:
The entire FediMeteo setup runs on a FreeBSD VM costing around 4 euros per month. It supports almost all major EU countries (plus the UK), with just a few left to complete. Currently, there are 25 separate jails, each running its own instance of snac, totaling 25 instances. The VM load typically stays around 10%, which increases to 30% when updates are published for countries with larger numbers of cities (currently Germany and Italy). The only time the load spikes is when new countries are announced; during that time, all remote instances connect to all cities to download their details.
As for RAM usage, excluding the ZFS cache, it's currently a total of 213 MB. Yes, MB.

#FreeBSD #FediMeteo #snac #Fediverse #Efficiency #RunBSD