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<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="meta" lang="meta" dir="ltr"> <head><script type="text/javascript" src="/_static/js/bundle-playback.js?v=HxkREWBo" charset="utf-8"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="/_static/js/wombat.js?v=txqj7nKC" charset="utf-8"></script> <script>window.RufflePlayer=window.RufflePlayer||{};window.RufflePlayer.config={"autoplay":"on","unmuteOverlay":"hidden"};</script> <script type="text/javascript" src="/_static/js/ruffle/ruffle.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript"> __wm.init("https://web.archive.org/web"); __wm.wombat("http://meta.wikimedia.org:80/wiki/What_we_use_the_money_for","20040815000823","https://web.archive.org/","web","/_static/", "1092528503"); </script> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/_static/css/banner-styles.css?v=S1zqJCYt" /> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/_static/css/iconochive.css?v=3PDvdIFv" />  <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"/> <meta name="KEYWORDS" content="What we use the money for"/> <meta name="robots" content="index,follow"/> <link rel="shortcut icon" href="/web/20040815000823im_/http://meta.wikimedia.org/favicon.ico"/> <link title="Creative Commons" type="application/rdf+xml" href="/w/wiki.phtml?title=What_we_use_the_money_for&action=creativecommons" rel="meta"/> <link rel="copyright" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20040815000823/http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html"/> <title>What we use the money for - Wikimedia's Meta wiki</title> <style type="text/css" media="screen,projection">/*<![CDATA[*/ @import "/web/20040815000823cs_/http://meta.wikimedia.org/style/monobook/main.css"; /*]]>*/</style> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="print" href="/web/20040815000823cs_/http://meta.wikimedia.org/style/commonPrint.css"/>  <script src="/web/20040815000823js_/http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=-&action=raw&gen=js" type="text/javascript"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="/web/20040815000823js_/http://meta.wikimedia.org/style/wikibits.js"></script> <style type="text/css">/*<![CDATA[*/ @import "/web/20040815000823cs_/http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=-&action=raw&gen=css"; /*]]>*/</style> </head> <body class="ns-0"> <div id="globalWrapper"> <div id="column-content"> <div id="content"> <a name="top" id="contentTop"></a> <h1 class="firstHeading">What we use the money for</h1> <div id="bodyContent"> <h3 id="siteSub">From Meta, a wiki about Wikimedia</h3> <div id="contentSub"></div>  <p>The Wikimedia sites include <em>Wikipedia</em>, one of the <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20040815000823/http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?&range=2y&size=large&url=wikipedia.org#graph" class="external" title="http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic details?&range=2y&size=large&url=wikipedia.org#graph">top 750 most visited</a> <span class="urlexpansion">(<i>http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?&range=2y&size=large&url=wikipedia.org#graph</i>)</span> websites in the world tracked by Alexa.com, and numerous other projects in many languages. This means that this site receives a lot of traffic and demands computing power. For this, the primary use of all of our funds is to purchase the computer equipment needed to support these activities.</p> <p>For the details of what we have done with donations from the start of 2004, please see:</p> <ul> <li><a href="/web/20040815000823/http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_servers" title="Wikimedia servers">Our servers today</a>. (The picture doesn't show them all)</li> <li><a href="/web/20040815000823/http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Hardware_order_January_2004" title="Hardware order January 2004">What we bought first in January 2004</a>.</li> <li><a href="/web/20040815000823/http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Upgrade_discussion_April_2004" title="Upgrade discussion April 2004">Hardware analysis in April</a> and <a href="/web/20040815000823/http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Hardware_order_May_2004" title="Hardware order May 2004">new purchases in May</a>.</li> <li><a href="/web/20040815000823/http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Q3_and_Q4_2004_hardware_order_worksheet" title="Q3 and Q4 2004 hardware order worksheet">Work in progress plan for our next purchase</a> and the projected <a href="/web/20040815000823/http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_budget" title="Wikimedia budget">Wikimedia budget</a> for the near future. We're about to spend another $10,000 on more equipment, which will exhaust the funds we have on hand; that will just be enough to handle the traffic we are getting today.</li> </ul> <p>We would like to acquire and set up equipment <em>now</em> to handle our anticipated growth and reliability needs through the end of the year. Web servers are currently the hot item we're after - those reach 100% CPU use for many hours at peak times. This quarter (1 July 2004 - 30 September 2004) alone we have provisionally budgeted $31,000 toward the purchase of new servers.</p> <p>So far we do not have enough cash to cover this budget. However, when we needed money for our big server purchase this past winter, many small donations covered our needs. To contribute or to check the latest account balances, please see our <strong><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20040815000823/http://wikimediafoundation.org/fundraising" class="external" title="http://wikimediafoundation.org/fundraising">donation page</a> <span class="urlexpansion">(<i>http://wikimediafoundation.org/fundraising</i>)</span></strong> at wikimediafoundation.org.</p> <p>We've received some queries about server hardware or hosting/bandwidth donations. Yes, we're potentially interested in those if the equipment is within about three years old. The best initial approach is to ask one of the <a href="/web/20040815000823/http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Developer" title="Developer">developers</a> in freenode.net IRC channel <a href="/web/20040815000823/http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC_channels" title="IRC channels">#mediawiki</a>.</p> <p>Longer term we are working on how to scale the databases (which of the many options to use). We're using three at the moment, one primarily for writes, one for slow queries and one for backup, the latter two both being replicating children. For data see:</p> <ul> <li><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20040815000823/http://wikimedia.org/stats/live/org.wikimedia.all.squid.requests-hits.html" class="external" title="http://wikimedia.org/stats/live/org.wikimedia.all.squid.requests-hits.html">Squid statistics</a> <span class="urlexpansion">(<i>http://wikimedia.org/stats/live/org.wikimedia.all.squid.requests-hits.html</i>)</span> showing total and cache hits.</li> <li><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20040815000823/http://download.wikimedia.org/ganglia3/?m=cpu_report&r=day&s=descending&c=Florida+cluster&h=&sh=1&hc=3" class="external" title="http://download.wikimedia.org/ganglia3/?m=cpu report&r=day&s=descending&c=Florida cluster&h=&sh=1&hc=3">Ganglia cluster stats</a> <span class="urlexpansion">(<i>http://download.wikimedia.org/ganglia3/?m=cpu_report&r=day&s=descending&c=Florida+cluster&h=&sh=1&hc=3</i>)</span> showing load. The ones which are mostly blue are the web servers, the red/blue mixed are the squid caches (about 60% max is right for max load for them or connect time suffers) and Suda and Ariel are the most heavily loaded database servers. Suda is disk-limited when in normal use as a database server. Ariel is memory/CPU bandwidth limited because it has faster disks, more cache and different workload.</li> <li><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20040815000823/http://wikimedia.org/stats/en.wikipedia.org" class="external" title="http://wikimedia.org/stats/en.wikipedia.org">Usage statistics</a> <span class="urlexpansion">(<i>http://wikimedia.org/stats/en.wikipedia.org</i>)</span> showing monthly hits to the servers for the english wikipedia (the largest)</li> </ul> <p>Our growth is pretty simple: when our servers are fast, we grow to use available capacity until we're slow again. There is still no sign of us hitting the limit on demand, so it appears that we'd have no problem finding a larger audience if we had another $50,000-100,000 to spend - our ballpark growth estimates suggest that we'd end up doing that by the end of the year if we stayed fast until then.</p> <p>One common question: can we use commodity PCs as web servers? We'd like to, but fitting them in the colocation facility is not currently practical. We're going for dual CPU 1U boxes as the next most cost-effective option for subsequent web server purchases. The Jan purchase was in part about getting enough boxes so we'd be able to switch them around to cover for failures, so those were cheaper-per-box 1U boxes. We have enough of those now, so it's CPU power/density time.</p> <p>If anyone has suggestions on how we use our money, please feel free to <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20040815000823/http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Talk:What_we_use_the_money_for&action=edit" class="external" title="http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Talk:What we use the money for&action=edit">make comments</a> <span class="urlexpansion">(<i>http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Talk:What_we_use_the_money_for&action=edit</i>)</span> on the talk page - we have a dozen or so people on the technical team and more input is always welcome, since we're after the most effective options we can find!</p>  <div class="printfooter"> Retrieved from "<a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20040815000823/http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/What_we_use_the_money_for">http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/What_we_use_the_money_for</a>"</div>  <div class="visualClear"></div> </div> </div> </div> <div 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