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1. hoggy Thu 28 Nov 2019 06:33AM UTC

   

   Thank you for all your hard work, and for keeping us updated. You guys rock!

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2. ladydragon76 Thu 28 Nov 2019 07:04AM UTC

   

   I appreciate everything y'all do to keep things going! <3

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3. Andúniel (Anduniela) Thu 28 Nov 2019 07:09AM UTC

   

   Thanks for the info and all your hard work.
   Thought u might as well grasp the opportunity and ask. I've been recently experiencing troubles with staying logged in, like instead of having to log in again after two weeks, I have to log in daily, even a couple of times a day, and I'm now wondering if this is perhaps related to the servers issue? Has anyone else experienced similar problems?

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4. uwu (Guest) Thu 28 Nov 2019 07:17AM UTC

   Thank you for updating us about the situation !! uwu

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5. Jenovahh Thu 28 Nov 2019 07:18AM UTC

   

   Thank you so much for everything you do!

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6. Sakon Thu 28 Nov 2019 07:30AM UTC

   

   Thank you for your hard work!

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7. sixpences Thu 28 Nov 2019 07:44AM UTC

   

   I understand that there are ideological motivations behind 'we own the hardware', but this is a perfect example of where migrating to modern cloud infrastructure would make this problem basically not exist. Hosting solutions in 2019 are not the same as they were in 2009; the motivations behind the decision to 100% self-host are not valid any longer. It would be a massively more responsible use of donors' money to migrate to the cloud and save thousands of dollars and months of poor service levels.

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8. 1. Nonny (Guest) Thu 28 Nov 2019 02:48PM UTC

      Which cloud hosts don't have any content restrictions/be okay with ALL the content hosted on Ao3? (Genuine question from a curious nonny who doesn't know about servers)

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   2. 1. sixpences Fri 29 Nov 2019 08:38AM UTC

         

         AWS, Google Cloud, Azure, all the big players give exactly zero shits about what you do on their infrastructure, because they're so big they have no ability to actually monitor anything. This is what I mean by 'hosting solutions in 2019 are not the same as they were in 2009'. AWS is hosting insane amounts of video pornography, which can be infinitely more heinous than anything on AO3; they are not going to give a single solitary fuck about fanfiction.

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   3. Acts_of_Tekla Thu 28 Nov 2019 03:21PM UTC

      

      "The cloud" is just someone else's server. Instead of owning servers and renting the physical space to put them in, AO3 would be renting someone else's server space. It would also therefore be beholden to the cloud computing company's whims/outages/etc. Remember when Amazon Web Services crashed? And even if there is a company that wouldn't put restrictions on content, (1) there's no guarantee that would never change and (2) we'd likely be sharing that company with the absolute dregs of the internet.

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   4. ancientreader Fri 29 Nov 2019 06:12AM UTC

      

      "The cloud" is a tool of corporate and governmental surveillance and control. As another reply points out, storing data in "the cloud" is storing it on someone else's servers, which means that someone else controls the content, the access to that content, and ultimately the existence of the content. And bear in mind that "access to that content" may include access by policing agencies. I for one can't imagine that Amazon, for example, would be as invested in defending against police overreach as AO3 would be.

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   5. james_ (AO3_ADT) (Official) Fri 29 Nov 2019 07:14AM UTC

      

      There are ideological motivations behind owning the servers, but there is an economic incentive to owning them as well. Currently we have 384 threads of Elasticsearch, which is all the hardware capacity we can bring to bear for Elasticsearch. Those machines each have more than 200 gigs of RAM.

      I have done a quick pricing exercise based on Amazon’s published prices, and the cheapest I can get for reserved instances on Amazon is 4 "c5.18xlarge.elasticsearch" (providing 288 threads), which would cost $227,764 for 3 years if we rented the servers and paid in advance. (That’s about $9 an hour. If we didn’t do those things, the price would be $18 an hour). We have recently ordered 5 servers with 128 threads each (for a total of 640 threads) at significantly less than this. We expect to be able to use them for Elasticsearch for about four years. After that, we'll probably repurpose them and get a few more years out of them.

      I agree that cloud computing can be cheaper for small systems and can scale capacity quickly. However, as traffic increases, the costs go up nearly linearly with the amount of traffic. By having volunteer staff who can maintain hardware, operating systems and applications we can save significant amounts of money.

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   6. 1. sixpences Fri 29 Nov 2019 08:46AM UTC

         

         Fair enough, although I will point out that when you're a reasonably-sized user you have an account manager and you do not pay nearly as much as the published prices (I work for a company with several large Elastic clusters along with the rest of our infrastructure in AWS, I don't handle the bills but they're not costing us the advertised price).

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9. KelaAshes Thu 28 Nov 2019 07:43AM UTC

   

   Thank you all so much for all you do! I truly thought it was because of the fact that I often have only two bars of cell service in some areas. Your work and planing and all your efforts do not go unnoticed. This site is literally the closest thing to social media I can stand these days. Fan fiction has enriched my life in more way than I can ever put into words. Thank you all so so so much!!!

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10. Trypo Thu 28 Nov 2019 08:03AM UTC

    

    Thank you so much Ao3 team, This is one of my favourite go to websites i go to every day and I hope everything goes well!!

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11. Lightning Strikes Multi (Yimin) Thu 28 Nov 2019 08:03AM UTC

    

    Thanks for keeping us updated! Keep up the great work!

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12. DisgruntledTortoiseshell Thu 28 Nov 2019 08:20AM UTC

    

    Thank you for all the hard work you do.

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13. notajoinerofthings Thu 28 Nov 2019 09:16AM UTC

    

    Thank you so much for all your hard work and for keeping us informed!

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14. Rdenergron Thu 28 Nov 2019 09:20AM UTC

    

    Thank you so much for your efforts ! ❤️❤️ LOVE YOU FOREVER !!!

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15. Kiranokira Thu 28 Nov 2019 09:30AM UTC

    

    Thank you so much for all you do. <3

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16. Bijoux53 (Guest) Thu 28 Nov 2019 09:41AM UTC

    Thank you very much for your update & explanation.I was worried it was at my end & didn't know what to do. It is exciting to hear about the new & improved servers to come. I cannot begin to tell you how much pleasure I get from reading in Archive daily. It is often the highlight of my day. From the bottom of my heart, I say "Thank you." :-)

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17. Shernii Thu 28 Nov 2019 10:03AM UTC

    

    Good luck

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18. saltaey Thu 28 Nov 2019 11:02AM UTC

    

    Thankyou for the information!! We’ll be waiting :)

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19. Delcat Thu 28 Nov 2019 11:04AM UTC

    

    Thank you for giving us plausible deniability on not meeting deadlines updates on the state of the website, and if there's any trouble with cost, please don't feel bad about passing the hat! Ao3 is home, I'm far from rolling in it but I could certainly spare five bucks to help keep the lights on, and I doubt I'm alone in that. You're the tops, I hope you feel appreciated because you very, very much are <3

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20. Yuu3 Thu 28 Nov 2019 11:21AM UTC

    

    Yay \o/

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21. Hanna_Tucker Thu 28 Nov 2019 11:24AM UTC

    

    Thank you guys so much for your hard work, most of us (including me) appreciate it immensely! And please don't listen to the few brat-face users who aren't- they probably have nothing better to do than complain.

    Last Edited Thu 28 Nov 2019 11:25AM UTC

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