[Labs-l] [Labs-announce] [action required] We are removing inactive projects.

[Tim Landscheidt]

Bryan Davis <bd808 at wikimedia.org> wrote:

> […]

> On the savings side, some really really rough napkin math using
> calculator.s3.amazonaws.com shows that just the virtual machines in
> active use by Labs projects would cost between $45k and $50k USD per
> month. On top of that a real AWS user would have to pay for data
> transfer and other networking services and probably a few support
> hours. That $50k USD per month also doesn't include any cost for
> things like actively managed real-time replicas of the Wikimedia
> production databases or any of the other shared services available in
> Labs. All told I would say that the Wikimedia movement is getting more
> than fair return on the moneys invested in the Labs hardware and
> staffing.

> […]

With ~ 1300 instances (CMIIW), that would be an average cost
of ~ USD 40,-/month.  I think that is way too high, and
stems from people choosing AWS and other cloud services for
elasticity and connectivity (after all, people want to earn
money with those servers).  The market price for a virtual
machine that fits typical Labs uses is probably smaller than
USD 10,-/month (including a more than sufficient amount of
traffic).

So adding more hardware is incredibly cheap compared to en-
gineers trying to save a few bytes or CPU cycles, and I
would like to see continuous investment there.  But of
course even then some cruft accumulates that needs to be
purged from time to time.

Tim