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Ask HN: How much does it cost to run Hacker News?

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Re: Ask HN: How much does it cost to run Hacker News?

#51

Post by moffkalast »

xuki wrote: post #18
sph wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how much it would cost to run if it were designed and run with 2022 modern best practices of Kubernetes, Helm, Node + React, on a fleet of cattle servers hosted on AWS, paired with expensive add-on services because running PostgreSQL is too hard. The cynic in me says it would cost at least 10x that, require a full time team of 5 devops, and we'd suffer at the very least the same amount of outages, if not wor…

I lol-ed at this. A few years ago, someone said it runs as a single process on 1 core and use no database, everything is written to filesystem.

That is what I'd expect it to still be tbh, if the responsiveness is anything to go by.

Re: Ask HN: How much does it cost to run Hacker News?

#52

Post by tjoff »

hackernewds wrote: post #44
andai wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two years ago I emailed HN to ask why favoriting posts is rate limited. Got the reply, "HN's main software runs on a single core." They also said they are working on an overhaul of Arc and HN, which will massively improve performance.

They gave you false info https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34171328

Nothing in that thread or linked threads provides anything that contradicts that statement that I could find.

Please be more descriptive so that people actually get your point.

Re: Ask HN: How much does it cost to run Hacker News?

#53

Post by sh4rks »

dspillett wrote: post #30
honest-teorema wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then why do you refer them as "best practice", can we use "common practice" instead?

In some circles of our buzz-word fuelled world what is considered “best practise” amongst risk-averse management is “what everyone else is already doing”. Anything else is too different: if it is such a good idea not to over-engineer, why is everyone else over-engineering?

How does one find the best tools for the job? I want to build something that is performant and maintainable, but I also don't want an over-engineered mess.

Re: Ask HN: How much does it cost to run Hacker News?

#54

Post by throwaway14356 »

rasengan wrote: post #33

A request optimized HN could cache pages and essentially only dynamically load votes and comments. This would reduce the need for a strong system.

i imagine it funny if you limit voting to min 2000 max 3000 point accounts.

could be an interesting formula in all kinds of hierarchical systems. Above some salary you are banned from the bike shedding discussion.

Re: Ask HN: How much does it cost to run Hacker News?

#55

Post by moffkalast »

Tams80 wrote: post #25
sph wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how much it would cost to run if it were designed and run with 2022 modern best practices of Kubernetes, Helm, Node + React, on a fleet of cattle servers hosted on AWS, paired with expensive add-on services because running PostgreSQL is too hard. The cynic in me says it would cost at least 10x that, require a full time team of 5 devops, and we'd suffer at the very least the same amount of outages, if not wor…

Not complex enough. Reckon you could easily fit in a few more steps there.

Needs more Redis, and clearly RabbitMQ would be best to pass the incoming comments to K8s.

Re: Ask HN: How much does it cost to run Hacker News?

#57

Post by RedShift1 »

nabaraz wrote: post #7

I believe it still runs on one box. Xeon E5-3567 (3.5Ghz). Stack is FREEBSD with nginx as front-end. From a quick look at M5 hosting price, cost is probably $500-$1000/month (6M requests).

Can't find that processor model, probably wrong number?

Re: Ask HN: How much does it cost to run Hacker News?

#58

Post by moffkalast »

nabaraz wrote: post #7

I believe it still runs on one box. Xeon E5-3567 (3.5Ghz). Stack is FREEBSD with nginx as front-end. From a quick look at M5 hosting price, cost is probably $500-$1000/month (6M requests).

I don't think they rent an instance, it's more likely a physical machine over at YC since they had that time based simultaneous SSD failure thing recently that likely wouldn't have happened in a datacenter.

So more than the power it takes to run it I doubt it's much of a monthly expense.

Re: Ask HN: How much does it cost to run Hacker News?

#59

Post by amelius »

pifm_guy wrote: post #47
sph wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how much it would cost to run if it were designed and run with 2022 modern best practices of Kubernetes, Helm, Node + React, on a fleet of cattle servers hosted on AWS, paired with expensive add-on services because running PostgreSQL is too hard. The cynic in me says it would cost at least 10x that, require a full time team of 5 devops, and we'd suffer at the very least the same amount of outages, if not wor…

Buuut... The Aws+kubernetes approach is very scalable. If overnight, HN became the new Facebook, the single server model wouldn't work, and the business opportunity would be lost. However, the kubernetes model probably would scale (probably with a few hiccups still, but doable), and HN would suddenly be a 100x business. That is why business leaders pick the more expensive 'best practice' setup.

I like it that HN has a built-in protection against an eternal September :)
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