TL;DR: This month, the total cost of running the https://vernissage.photos platform amounted to $184.59. A significant portion of these costs was covered by patrons: $100.84. I am very grateful for this support - without it, it would not be possible to run the platform in its current form.
Below is a detailed financial report for the operation of https://vernissage.photos during the month of October. The report is broken down by individual service providers whose services are essential to the functioning of the application.
Amazon (S3 + CloudFront)
Let's start with storage. Vernissage uses Amazon S3 to store all user files and relies on Amazon CloudFront - a content delivery network (CDN) - to distribute those files quickly and reliably across the internet.
- Total storage used: 552.8 GB
- Total number of files: 1,703,725
- Total cost: $18.04
The number of photos is enormous, and the process of reducing the retention period for photos stored in Amazon S3 is still ongoing (the goal is 3 months).
Fly.io
In October, unfortunately, all servers had to be migrated from the WAW (Warsaw) region to the AMS (Amsterdam) region on fly.io. The provider initially migrated the services automatically (to the Stockholm region), but after that, they didn’t function correctly, so everything had to be redone manually.
The worst situation occurred with the database server, which stopped working entirely after the fly.io migration - even though one instance was the main and the other was a replica, both were stuck in read-only mode.
The databases were immediately moved to Managed Postgres, a new service offered by fly.io, which, however, is significantly more expensive than the standard one. As a result, I was forced to reduce the resources allocated to the database, which in turn caused a noticeable decrease in the overall performance of the system.
- Total cost: $165.40
Here’s a breakdown of the services currently in use:
| Name | Type | RAM | Amount |
|---|---|---|---|
| push | shared-cpu-1x | 512MB | 2 machines |
| web | shared-cpu-2x | 1024MB | 2 machines |
| api | shared-cpu-2x | 2048MB | 2 machines |
| jobs | shared-cpu-2x | 2048MB | 2 machines |
| proxy | shared-cpu-2x | 512MB | 2 machines |
| redis | shared-cpu-2x | 1024MB | 1 machine |
| database | shared-cpu-2x | 2048MB | 2 machines |
OpenAI
The use of OpenAI for generating photo descriptions and suggesting relevant tags has remained at a consistent level.
- Total tokens used: 376,445
- Total requests: 445
- Total cost: $1.15
Patreon
Huge thanks to all the patrons who make it possible to keep the platform running - and a warm welcome to those who joined last month! Your support truly keeps this project alive, and I’m deeply grateful for it.
- Total contributions: $100.84
In October, the total cost of operating the service amounted to $184.59. This is very similar to the cost in September; however, the resources allocated to the database have been significantly reduced. Unfortunately, I am not able to contribute more funds out of my own pocket to increase these resources. I hope that in the future, with greater financial support, this will become possible.
Thanks again to everyone for your incredible support - it really means the world to me.
— Marcin Czachurski