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The main lichess engine (lila, open source) is a single monolith program that's deployed on a single server. It serves ~5 million games per day. But there are a

The main lichess engine (lila, open source) is a single monolith program that's deployed on a single server. It serves ~5 million games per day. But there are a several other pieces too. They discuss the architecture here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=crKNBSpO2_I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=crKNBSpO2_I BTW consider donating if you use lichess.

justinclift 2y ago
Wow. ~US$40k/mo running costs, with about US$5k/mo for server hosting: https://lichess.org/costs https://lichess.org/costs It looks like the servers are individually managed via OVH or similar, rather than running their own gear in co-location or similar. Wonder why?
- squigz 2y ago
  Surprising numbers, and really goes to show how cheap the hardware/software side is for this sort of thing if you do it right. I wonder what the "Misc dev salaries" is for - only curious because it's a flat $5k
  - justinclift 2y ago
    Heh heh heh. To me those numbers seem on the high side as I'm (personally) used to (for cheap projects) scavenging together stuff from Ebay before deploying to a data centre. ;)
    - squigz 2y ago
      lichess is hardly a "cheap project" though :P It's one of the most popular chess platforms
      - justinclift 2y ago
        Sure, but they seem to be extremely budget constrained. ;)
        me_me_me 2y ago
        no surprise there tbh Here is a comparison of free and their premium accounts: https://lichess.org/features https://lichess.org/features
        justinclift 2y ago
        Looks like they're fulfilling their mission?
- tormeh 2y ago
  Easy: If something is wrong with the physical gear it's OVH's problem rather than theirs. It also means no one has to ever go to the data center which is probably important for a geographically distributed team (I assume they are). Cheap, no-frills cloud is extremely underrated, IMO.
  - danpalmer 2y ago
    Underrated? The flip side is that hardware failures are still your problem like they would be with rolling your own hosting. I think they’re correctly rated for the position on the scale of traders that they provide.
- benmmurphy 2y ago
  its also crazy how much cheaper it is than AWS. the primary DB is around $500/month with 32 CPU and 256 GB of RAM and 7TB. AWS RDS db.m6gd.8xlarge which is 32 CPU and 128 GB of RAM costs $2150/month before paying for storage as well.
  - bryan_w 2y ago
    Yeah, but you get what you pay for. That m6gd.8xlarge would never be subject to such a long network outage as once the hardware fault was detected, it would be moved to another machine
    - beaviskhan 2y ago
      Yup, and you also get to make AWS deal with OS upgrades, DB upgrades, backups, etc.
      - paulryanrogers 2y ago
        You have to pay 2x for multi-AZ or you get downtime for upgrades. And DB major version upgrades require manual effort unless you want to roll the dice on their new blue-green feature, which can take hours to fail or finish cutting over.
        aflukasz 2y ago
        > You have to pay 2x for multi-AZ or you get downtime for upgrades. Worse. In Single AZ deployments you get (short, but not that short or strongly bound) downtime for daily backups and when doing snapshots. Source: - https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonRDS/latest/UserGuide/USER_ManagingAutomatedBackups.html https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonRDS/latest/UserGuide/USER_...: "During the automatic backup window, storage I/O might be suspended briefly while the backup process initializes (typically under a few seconds). [...] For MariaDB, MySQL, Oracle, and PostgreSQL, I/O activity isn't suspended on your primary during backup for Multi-AZ deployments because the backup is taken from the standby. ", - https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonRDS/latest/UserGuide/USER_CreateSnapshot.html https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonRDS/latest/UserGuide/USER_...: "Amazon RDS creates a storage volume snapshot of your DB instance, backing up the entire DB instance and not just individual databases. Creating this DB snapshot on a Single-AZ DB instance results in a brief I/O suspension that can last from a few seconds to a few minutes, depending on the size and class of your DB instance.". Not to mention that multi-AZ deployments incur extra transfer cost between zones - not between DB instances (this one is free, last time I checked), but between your compute deployments and DB instances, if your compute does not automatically follow the zone of the db host it talks to.
squigz 2y ago
https://lichess.org/patron https://lichess.org/patron
hilux 2y ago
I'm a patron! I really appreciate the benefits package for patrons. Thibault is zee best.
jefurii 2y ago
There's also a nice architectural diagram on their GitHub page: https://github.com/lichess-org/lila https://github.com/lichess-org/lila

justinclift 2y ago

Wow. ~US$40k/mo running costs, with about US$5k/mo for server hosting: https://lichess.org/costs https://lichess.org/costs It looks like the servers are individually managed via OVH or similar, rather than running their own gear in co-location or similar. Wonder why?

squigz 2y ago
Surprising numbers, and really goes to show how cheap the hardware/software side is for this sort of thing if you do it right. I wonder what the "Misc dev salaries" is for - only curious because it's a flat $5k
- justinclift 2y ago
  Heh heh heh. To me those numbers seem on the high side as I'm (personally) used to (for cheap projects) scavenging together stuff from Ebay before deploying to a data centre. ;)
  - squigz 2y ago
    lichess is hardly a "cheap project" though :P It's one of the most popular chess platforms
    - justinclift 2y ago
      Sure, but they seem to be extremely budget constrained. ;)
      - me_me_me 2y ago
        no surprise there tbh Here is a comparison of free and their premium accounts: https://lichess.org/features https://lichess.org/features
        justinclift 2y ago
        Looks like they're fulfilling their mission?
tormeh 2y ago
Easy: If something is wrong with the physical gear it's OVH's problem rather than theirs. It also means no one has to ever go to the data center which is probably important for a geographically distributed team (I assume they are). Cheap, no-frills cloud is extremely underrated, IMO.
- danpalmer 2y ago
  Underrated? The flip side is that hardware failures are still your problem like they would be with rolling your own hosting. I think they’re correctly rated for the position on the scale of traders that they provide.
benmmurphy 2y ago
its also crazy how much cheaper it is than AWS. the primary DB is around $500/month with 32 CPU and 256 GB of RAM and 7TB. AWS RDS db.m6gd.8xlarge which is 32 CPU and 128 GB of RAM costs $2150/month before paying for storage as well.
- bryan_w 2y ago
  Yeah, but you get what you pay for. That m6gd.8xlarge would never be subject to such a long network outage as once the hardware fault was detected, it would be moved to another machine
  - beaviskhan 2y ago
    Yup, and you also get to make AWS deal with OS upgrades, DB upgrades, backups, etc.
    - paulryanrogers 2y ago
      You have to pay 2x for multi-AZ or you get downtime for upgrades. And DB major version upgrades require manual effort unless you want to roll the dice on their new blue-green feature, which can take hours to fail or finish cutting over.
      - aflukasz 2y ago
        > You have to pay 2x for multi-AZ or you get downtime for upgrades. Worse. In Single AZ deployments you get (short, but not that short or strongly bound) downtime for daily backups and when doing snapshots. Source: - https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonRDS/latest/UserGuide/USER_ManagingAutomatedBackups.html https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonRDS/latest/UserGuide/USER_...: "During the automatic backup window, storage I/O might be suspended briefly while the backup process initializes (typically under a few seconds). [...] For MariaDB, MySQL, Oracle, and PostgreSQL, I/O activity isn't suspended on your primary during backup for Multi-AZ deployments because the backup is taken from the standby. ", - https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonRDS/latest/UserGuide/USER_CreateSnapshot.html https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonRDS/latest/UserGuide/USER_...: "Amazon RDS creates a storage volume snapshot of your DB instance, backing up the entire DB instance and not just individual databases. Creating this DB snapshot on a Single-AZ DB instance results in a brief I/O suspension that can last from a few seconds to a few minutes, depending on the size and class of your DB instance.". Not to mention that multi-AZ deployments incur extra transfer cost between zones - not between DB instances (this one is free, last time I checked), but between your compute deployments and DB instances, if your compute does not automatically follow the zone of the db host it talks to.

squigz 2y ago

https://lichess.org/patron https://lichess.org/patron

hilux 2y ago

I'm a patron! I really appreciate the benefits package for patrons. Thibault is zee best.

jefurii 2y ago

There's also a nice architectural diagram on their GitHub page: https://github.com/lichess-org/lila https://github.com/lichess-org/lila