Hello again! I didn't really want to write a full metrics and updates article for this month as it's been too soon, but still wanted to say hello and let everyone know what I'm working on. Things have been very very busy lately. This is also the second time I've had to write this article as I accidentally closed the tab and wiped it. Oops.
The pfSense Replacement Project
My #1 concern right now is that under moderate load, pfSense is having trouble keeping up. There is at least 2-3% packet loss on all connections, regardless of bandwidth going through those connections, which tells me there's overload somewhere causing it to drop packets. See image below.
I have a plan that should rule that out entirely: Swap the virtualized pfSense instance for the R330 I have in storage, and then deprecate the R320 that's running DD-WRT in one fell swoop. The R330 is a beast of a machine, with a 4 core Skylake at 3.5GHz. Should be more than enough for routing well over a gigabit. This would also set me up for redundant WAN down the road. This, however, is a very high impact and highly complex project. This will take some time and some downtime to complete.
My Busy Schedule
I have seen the inside of an aircraft more times than I care to admit this year. Between flying to Atlanta for work, making excursions to Nebraska for fun, or heading to Berlin for conferences, I am pretty completely DRAINED. I am also working on lots of non-Lain.la projects, such as contracting and coordinating my own home improvement projects. This takes time, money, and effort that I could be spending on Lain.la but can't. Not to worry though - I'll find time regardless, and I intend to make sure I respond to all emails including VM requests, abuse reports, and questions with the usual speed.
Resource Consumption Stats
There's a few key metrics I want to show you regarding resource consumption on Lain.la. Have a gander at the following:
- ISP bandwidth is at an all time high. I bet I'm breaking a regional record for Verizon FIOS or something. Check the graph below! 70TB by the end of the month!
- Pomf disk usage is growing at a shocking rate. Exponential even. It took 2.5 years to get to 9TB of disk usage, but the last four months have been another 7TB of disk usage. These are pretty crazy numbers. At this rate, I may be out of storage by 2026. Scary to think about, but by then I'm sure I can think of a solution. Check the blue line on the image below (and replace the G with a T, it should be in Terabytes):
- The host providing all of the free VPSes is doing okay on resources. We're a little short on RAM, but CPU is great. If you have a CPU intensive application you need running, please let me know, as I have some spare room on the 12 core CPU of this host.
- The power bill was $546 this month. Just thought you should know.
Nulled LLC
(Full disclosure: I am in a wonderful romantic relationship with Jade, the owner of Nulled LLC.)
If you haven't heard of Nulled LLC, they're a tiny VPS provider out of Omaha, NE (Site here).The owner, Jade, is a person I consider to have very similar values and interests to me, and soon we may collaborate on some projects related to the infrastructure of Lain.la. This could mean that I colocate all of Lain.la in the same datacenter as Nulled, as her customer. This datacenter is the same Tier 3 certified DC that Nulled uses, that I got an amazing tour of just recently. I don't quite know yet which way things will go, but if that does happen, it would be way better than "under my bed" for sure.
It should be noted that, outside of physical access, I have no intention of having anyone else work on the systems of Lain.la or access its data. This is for fairly obvious reasons. More on all this as I get more info and decide what the best path forward is. I'm excited to collaborate in any capacity with someone of her caliber, I just don't know how that will manifest quite yet in the context of Lain.la.
As a side note: If you need a VPS that isn't hosted under someone's bed and doesn't have a support SLA of "when I get to it", try out Nulled.
That's all for now!
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