Learning patterns/How to run software on a dedicated Wikimedia Cloud VPS server

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How to run software on a dedicated Wikimedia Cloud VPS server

problemSome services requires customized operating system environments or extensive computational resources beyond what is available in the toolforge environment.

solutionSoftware can be installed on a dedicated server in Wikimedia Cloud VPS (as opposed to toolforge).

creator• Shilad

created on4 September, 2015

status:DRAFT

What problem does this solve?

Many researchers and developers in the Wikimedia community create software tools and bots. For most of these projects, a UNIX account on a shared, virtualized server in the Wikimedia Toolforge environment will be sufficient. However, some of these projects may require customized server software, or demand substantial server resources (memory, disk, or CPU).

In these cases, a project leader can provision a dedicated virtualized server from Wikimedia labs. As of September 2015, dedicated server images can have up to 32GB memory, 4 vCPUs, and 160 GB of disk space. Servers can also access shared installations of Postgres, MySql, and Redis.

What is the solution?

To provision a dedicated server, follow the steps outlined in the Wikimedia Cloud VPS getting starting guide. You'll need to 1) create a user account with shell access, 2) create a project, and 3) create server instances attached to the project. If you get stuck, the #wikimedia-cloud IRC channel is active and tremendously helpful.

Things to consider

• You should be comfortable functioning as a Linux system administrator to do this.
• The shared servers available in Toolforge will generally be a better option that a dedicated server.

When to use

• Only use this approach when a shared Toolforge account does not meet your needs!

Examples

• The soweego project indeed lives in a Cloud VPS instance.

Endorsements

• This is exactly what the soweego team followed to deploy the system in production. --Hjfocs (talk) 15:45, 25 July 2019 (UTC)

See also

External links

• WikiTech Main Page
• WMF Cloud VPS Getting Started Guide.
• The WikiBrain Toolforge Project (as an example).