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Open Source Infrastructure

Description of our public infrastructure that keeps Hachyderm online.

    This page is missing a lot of details - we’ll be publishing more in November/December of 2024.

    Footprint

    Today Hachyderm runs a multi-cloud, global topology that is distributed across the following service providers:

    • Edge node “CDN” - small, lightweight Linode VMs operating around the world. These serve as the front door to Hachyderm and allow us to cache content close to where our users consume it.
    • Mastodon Core - physical machines operating in Hetzner in Falkenstein, Germany.
    • Media Storage - media (images, videos, audio, etc.) storage hosted in DigitalOcean’s Spaces S3-alike service.

    The disparate clouds are linked together using Tailscale to create a resilient, secure global virtual private network.

    Map of the world with Hachyderm’s sites as pins on the map

    Components

    Key components of our tech stack include:

    (Notice we didn’t say Kubernetes – we don’t currently use it, nor plan to!)

    Experimenting in Public

    Hachyderm deeply believes there is untapped value left in computer science. We intend on approaching our infrastructure as an opportunity for safe and thoughtful experiments, similar to how the International Space Station conducts experiments in orbit.

    We intend on prototyping new technology, operational models, SRE organizational structure, follow-the-sun patterns, and open source collaborative workstreams for our infrastructure. In the coming months, we will be sharing ways in which the broader Hachyderm community can volunteer to support our infrastructure, as well as register hypothesis backed experiments to run with our data and our services. We are experimenting on the tools and services that support Hachyderm’s services such as prototyping databases, HTTP(s) servers, and compute runtimes.

    … but never for AI

    The Hachyderm team will never use your user data in an experiment, including for the purposes of training LLMs/AI models.

    To be even more direct: you, as a Hachyderm user will never be leveraged in an experiment. We will not be experimenting on you. All user profile data, direct messages, post content, access metrics, demographic detail, and personal information will never be used in any form of experiment.

    Volunteering

    If you’re interested in volunteering, read more here.

    Infrastructure Placement & Supporting Tools

    ComponentAsset Location(s)Provider(s) & CountryServices Provided
    Edge CDN
    • US - California and New Jersey
    • DE - Frankfurt
    • JP - Tokyo
    • (further expansion planned soon)
    		US - Akamai
    • Virtual Machines
    • Network Backbone
    Mastodon Web
    • DE - Frankfurt
    		DE - Hetzner
    • Virtual Machines
    • Network Backbone
    Mastodon Sidekiq (Queues)
    • DE - Frankfurt
    		DE - Hetzner
    • Virtual Machines
    • Network Backbone
    Mastodon Redis
    • DE - Frankfurt
    		DE - Hetzner
    • Virtual Machines
    • Network Backbone
    Mastodon Streaming
    • DE - Frankfurt
    		DE - Hetzner
    • Virtual Machines
    • Network Backbone
    Mastodon Postgresql (Database)
    • DE - Frankfurt
    		DE - Hetzner
    • Virtual Machines
    • Network Backbone
    Observability Metrics & System Logs
    • DE - Frankfurt
    		DE - Hetzner
    • Virtual Machines
    • Network Backbone
    Mastodon Media Storage
    • DE - Frankfurt
    		US - DigitalOcean
    • S3-compatible Storage
    Observability Traces
    • US
    		US - Honeycomb
    • Honeycomb OTel Ingestion
    Connectivity Mesh
    • Various - present on all Hachyderm VMs
    		CA - Tailscale
    • Virtual Encrypted Network
    • Machine Identity & Tagging
    Code Version Control
    • US - Washington + Virginia
    		US - Github/Microsoft
    • Git Source Control
    Secrets Management
    • US - North Virginia
    		CA - 1Password
    • 1Password Vault

    Historical Archive

    Here’s our “v2” infrastructure diagram from circa November 2022:

    Infrastructure Contributors

    Some contributors have opted to remain anonymous. Thank you to all our volunteers past & present!