Category Archives: Backups

TurtleIsland.video has arrived!

By Backups, TurtleIsland.video, Upgrades

YouTube-like video sharing and great for artists/creatives

This post is a little late, but the Turtle Island PeerTube instance TurtleIsland.video is now in operation. Peertube, as you may know, is a YouTube-like ActivityPub enabled app. So it federates with our Mastodon instance TurtleIsland.social, Pixelfed instance TurtleIsland.art and other ActivityPub enabled instances.

Currently, registrations are open to all Native/Indigenous users.

We haven’t found any managed hosting for PeerTube that meets our standards yet, so we are self hosting this. However, this is a preinstalled docker container so hopefully the automatic upgrades should be painless. Videos are stored on a high-performance CDN with virtually unlimited capacity.

All configuration files, media and database storage are backed up daily to a remote secure object storage. In the extremely unlikely event of a system corruption, Turtle Island can be restored fresh in about an hour tops.

Ditto with system upgrades, due to the more surgical nature of the backups, upgrades will be a few minutes at worst. More than likely most upgrades will be a mere blip and not even noticeable.

Thanks!
-Yehuda

Follow on Mastodon – TurtleIsland.social/@Yehuda
Follow on Mastodon – TurtleIsland.social/@Tzipporah
Follow on Mastodon – TurtleIsland.social/@Hvresse

TurtleIsland.art has arrived!

By Backups, TurtleIsland.art, Upgrades

Instagram-like photo sharing and great for artists/creatives

Sunday, September 10, 2023 – The Turtle Island Pixelfed instance TurtleIsland.art is now in operation. Pixelfed, as you may know, is an Instagram-like ActivityPub enabled app. So it federates with our Mastodon instance TurtleIsland.social and other ActivityPub enabled instances.

Currently, registrations are limited to TurtleIsland.social artist/creative users. If you’re a Native/Indigenous artist/creative and would like to give it a spin, sign up at TurtleIsland.social and send me (@Yehuda) a message requesting a login.

Importantly, Pixelfed is beta software and everything that implies. There are imperfections, but we felt it was important enough to be an early adopter. We haven’t found any managed hosting for Pixelfed that meets our standards yet, so we are self hosting this. However, this is a preinstalled docker container so hopefully the automatic upgrades should be painless. All in all though, everything is beta.

There will be once a week cold bare-vps snapshots on Wednesdays 5am-6pm. Additionally all configuration files, media and database storage are backed up daily to a remote secure object storage. In the extremely unlikely event of a system corruption, Turtle Island can be restored fresh in about an hour tops.

Ditto with system upgrades, due to the more surgical nature of the backups, upgrades will be a few minutes at worst. More than likely most upgrades will be a mere blip and not even noticeable.

Thanks!
-Yehuda

Follow on Mastodon – TurtleIsland.social/@Yehuda
Follow on Mastodon – TurtleIsland.social/@Tzipporah
Follow on Mastodon – TurtleIsland.social/@Hvresse

TurtleIsland.social has a new home!

By Backups, TurtleIsland.social, Upgrades

Saabe Dream by Mishiikenh Kwe
Used with permission ©Mishiikenh Kwe https://www.instagram.com/mishiikenhkwe

TurtleIsland.social has moved to managed hosting

Sunday, September 10, 2023 – TurtleIsland.social moved to professional Mastodon instance hosting, including a complete migration of all the users and content too. So now we can scale to thousands and thousands of users, handle unlimited celebrities or other high impact users. And no more install/upgrade/backup headaches/anxieties for me. I can totally concentrate on the community now.

This will also increase our uptime. No more hour long Wednesday snapshots. All configuration files, media and database storage are backed up daily to a remote secure object storage. In the extremely unlikely event of a system corruption, Turtle Island can be restored fresh in about an hour tops.

Ditto with system upgrades, due to the more surgical nature of the backups, upgrades will be a few minutes at worst. More than likely most upgrades will be a mere blip and not even noticeable.

Thanks!
-Yehuda

Follow on Mastodon – TurtleIsland.social/@Yehuda
Follow on Mastodon – TurtleIsland.social/@Tzipporah
Follow on Mastodon – TurtleIsland.social/@Hvresse

Backup Wednesdays

By Backups, TurtleIsland.art, TurtleIsland.blog, TurtleIsland.social, Upgrades

Backup Wednesdays and other maintenance events

Just a reminder that all Turtle Island servers have weekly cold bare-metal or more accurately cold bare-virtual private server backups. In other words, the servers will be shutdown and backups made while they are off.

These backups will happen during the 5:00am-6:30am CST time period on Wednesday each week. Additionally, servers will occasionally undergo unscheduled upgrades and other maintenance events. Ordinarily upgrades include security fixes that need to be applied immediately. Usually these are done in daytime hours.

Hot database backups will also be performed daily, but these do not require downtime, and are fully transparent to users.

There will be no reminders each week for regularly scheduled backups, but know they are planned for every Wednesday. Unscheduled downtimes will be announced on my TurtleIsland.social account shortly before they happen if possible.

Thanks!
-Yehuda

Follow on Mastodon – TurtleIsland.social/@Yehuda
Follow on Mastodon – TurtleIsland.social/@Tzipporah
Follow on Mastodon – TurtleIsland.social/@Hvresse