The documentation give clear instructions for installing and setting up a Lemmy instance, but it doesn’t really tell me what I need to do so beyond the implication that I need some computer running Linux.
I have a QNAP NAS device which is running a flavor of linux; how much storage space is recommended for a public instance? Do I need my own website?
You primarily need Docker, specifically (unless you want to set it all up by hand) Docker Compose. All installation options for Lemmy utilize Docker to host the components (db, API, UI, etc.). Depending if you go the Ansible or Docker/manual route you will need Nginx as well.
You will need disk space to store content (including pictures). The CPU/RAM needs are super low unless you have a lot of people on your instance.
You will need a domain for federation to work (like my instance is at lemmy.wizjenkins.com).
Lastly you will need an SSL certificate but Lemmy can generate this for you assuming you have your domain pointed to your server before you start everything up.
I’m not familiar with QNAP but generally NAS servers don’t support Docker Compose so you might be better off with a raspberry pi or VM or something.
EKS also seems like a good option here. I was actually just looking into the exact same question OP asked and I’m thinking about getting one up and running on EKS to take advantage of Autoscaling Groups
EKS is great if you know Kubernetes. Might be overkill to just set up an instance to try it out.
I was thinking along the lines of a deployment platform that would be scalable as it seems there have been reports of scaling issues recently. (Un)fortunately I work on Kubernetes all day every day for my work so the complexity isn’t the main issue, it’s just carving out some time to work on it.
Oh yeah a Helm chart for Lemmy would be sick! Some of the more popular instances are in definite need of it from what I’ve seen.
You need a domain as well. Not much storage space is needed, 50gb is plenty.
If I were to create Communities around art/photography, am I correct to assume that all those image files would be living on my instance’s storage?
You are correct - it will live on the instance it is uploaded to and federate out to instances subbed to it
I am not exactly sure, but I believe that an image file is hosted on the server of the person that posts the image!
So no, your server would only host the pictures that you and your users post, others might land in cache but can be cleaned.
If you’re hosting QNAP at home, you’ll need to setup the port forwards to allow outside access and point your domain to it. That might not be allowed by your ISP.
Lemmy is lite on resource usage. For space, it really depends on how much content you sync in, or directly upload. For reference, my own Lemmy instance is using 7.4GB of space after being active for two months.
