Server hosting

This is a work in progress

Slrpnk.net is hosted by F-hub.org, a volunteer driven and non-commercial effort to host federated community services in a resource efficient and ethical way. F-hub.org grew out of a community of open-source game developers (freegamedev.net) that has existed since the early 2000s.

The F-hub.org servers are based on second-hand consumer PC and data-center hardware, but optimized for low energy consumption. Battery backup power is provided and data is stored with triple redundancy (off-site backups are still a work in progress). Electricity is currently provided by the utility grid (about 60% green-energy, mostly from a geothermal power-plant) but plans exist to upgrade to a on-site solar PV system for near 100% renewable power.

All the servers are operated and maintained (as a hobby) by one of the founding members and are currently located on the Azores in Portugal. Connectivity is provided through a dedicated high-speed glasfiber connection.

Hardware

Slrpnk.net currently runs on a shared 7th gen Intel CPU server with 8 threads, 32GB RAM and SATA SSD storage in raid configuration. Images are stored on a large HDD raid array with automatic caching on SSD storage.

The plan is to migrate at least the main PostgreSQL database to a dedicated 4th gen Intel server (4 cores, 8GB ram) with faster NVMe SSD storage to optimize data access performance.

External services

Given how difficult it is to have outgoing email accepted by the large email providers, all emails are currently routed through an external SMTP server hosted by OVH in France (same as the domain registration and DNS routing).

There are backup plans to move the servers to a co-location data-center owned by Altice, should this be required for scaling. However, monthly rent of rack-space is quite costly (starts at around 300€/month), thus this will require a substancial regular donation base to be possible.