Self-hosting your Mastodon media with SeaweedFS

[stefano@mastodon.bsd.cafe]

Self-hosting your Mastodon media with SeaweedFS

https://it-notes.dragas.net/2025/11/06/self-hosting-your-mastodon-media-with-seaweedfs/

#FreeBSD #SeaweedFS #Mastodon #ITNotes #Fediverse #Hosting #OwnYourData #RunBSD

[thomas@metalhead.club]

@stefano thanks for your post! I've considered switching from Minio to SeaweedFS as well, but haven't really made a decision, yet. SeaweedFS seems to be very simple to set up. 💪

[stefano@mastodon.bsd.cafe]

@thomas I did it and it's been easier than expected. Now, SeaweedFS is my first choice for Mastodon Media hosting

[kris@outmo.de]

@thomas @stefano I am happy with Garage for object storage. Definity worth a look 👍

[linus@telegrafverket.cc]

@stefano interesting. do you have any idea how it compares to https://git.deuxfleurs.fr/Deuxfleurs/garage ?

[stefano@mastodon.bsd.cafe]

@linus I tested it. After more or less 60 GB, it started to be extremely slow and fill up all the CPUs. I decided to stop. I've been contacted by one of the devs and they suggested me to try a newer release. And I'll definitely do it as I love the concept.

[stefano@mastodon.bsd.cafe]

@kris @thomas I tested it. After more or less 60 GB, it started to be extremely slow and fill up all the CPUs. I decided to stop. I've been contacted by one of the devs and they suggested me to try a newer release. And I'll definitely do it as I love the concept.

[jae@darkdork.dev]

@stefano @linus unfortunately even with latest build i still have slowdown with cpu-spiking at higher levels of storage. seaweedfs is also what i'm using i think i mentioned. works great especially given media endpoint. btw wonderful tutorial, wish i had it a few months ago lol

[stefano@mastodon.bsd.cafe]

@jae @linus ahah thanks. It was in my todo list - it's been there for months - but never had the time to finish it

[maswan@mastodon.acc.sunet.se]

@stefano
For what scale do you think it is reasonable to break out media to its own service? I only have experience of up to a couple of hundred users with plain filesystem storage.

[stefano@mastodon.bsd.cafe]

@maswan I'd do it immediately - even for one single user. But I'm a fan of keeping things separate (valkey on one jail, postgres on another, etc.)

[maswan@mastodon.acc.sunet.se]

@stefano Ah, I am not fond of running a lot of different services if I can get away without, from a maintenance burden point of view.

[stefano@mastodon.bsd.cafe]

@maswan for me, it's the exact opposite: having all the services inside a single jail means that one dependency could break other stuff - while keeping them separate means I can upgrade, for example, valkey without having to upgrade, for example, ruby

[lapo@f.lapo.it]

@stefano I'm trying SeaweedFS as a S3 storage (and FUSE mounts, too) on my daily job and looks wonderful so far. Such much easier than Ceph to set up.

I'm also pushing a bit to have more metrics. 🤣

[stefano@mastodon.bsd.cafe]

@lapo this is great!