ARM64 Production Level Reliability

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A user, dadberg, successfully transitioned to ARM-based servers, reducing costs, but is uncertain about the reliability of Discourse on ARM64 for production loads. Falco replied that although Discourse is ARM64 compatible and used for PostgreSQL and Redis production hosting, it is not yet used for hosting production traffic. However, as long as database backups are safely stored off-site and the website is reliably monitored, it should be safe to use ARM in production.

1

Hi there, I hope you’re doing well,

As always, Discourse is many steps ahead of the industry, yesterday I’ve tested the full transition to ARM based servers and it was successful! Saving hundreds of dollars per month on server/electricity costs!

But as I’m not a real ruby developer, on top of that I don’t know too much about how packages compatibility and missing dependencies may affect the reliability of our Discourse setup in terms of functionality and security.

May I ask, is discourse on ARM64 battle tested and officially reliable for serious production loads, or should I stick with x64 for now?

Best regards :hearts:

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While we use ARM for PostgreSQL and Redis production hosting, and we have made the Ruby app ARM64 compatible since Discourse on a Raspberry Pi | Blog, we don’t host production traffic from our hosting in ARM yet.

That said, as long as you can safely store database backups off-site and monitor the website for error/response times reliably, it should be safe to give ARM in production traffic.