"Elf-Disclosure" for Dec 2024
Following the increased effort in November to prepare for Black Friday, December was a quiet, internally-focused month, primarily about preparing for a holiday break, ensuring enough bugs were fixed and capacity was added to carry us over into January without having to make any significant (and disruptive) changes.
During December, it became apparent that our open-source, build-in-public business metrics had inspired less-than-transparent competitors, and consequently we've decided to stop disclosing financial metrics in our monthly reports. (our technical resources remain open-source)
To get us started, here are some geeky stats for Dec 2024, followed by a summary of some of the user-facing changes announced this month in the blog...
Stats
| Focus | Oct Sep | Nov 2024 | Dec 2024 |
| Discord members | 1639 | 2219 | 2328 |
| YouTube subscribers | 420 | 579 | 618 |
| TikTok followers | 1 | 28 | 28 |
| X followers | 24 | 88 | 90 |
The stats below illustrate CPU cores used (not percentage). These stats only cover the DE cluster at present, we're working on cross-cluster metrics aggregation to make this data more useful.
Tenant CPU load is 25% higher than the previous month, and while MediaFusion has seen a decrease in load due to database query optimizations, Comet has seen an increase, since the StremThru implementation restored RD cached searches several days ago.
Note that leading up to Black Friday, we significantly increased our compute capacity (compare the amount of nodes this month to last month), and during December we scaled these back to realistic requirements.
kubectl top nodes
NAME CPU(cores) CPU% MEMORY(bytes) MEMORY%
fairy01 2937m 18% 76426Mi 59%
fairy02 1869m 11% 55905Mi 43%
fairy03 701m 4% 79816Mi 62%
gretel07 1011m 6% 44513Mi 34%
gretel08 3809m 23% 56575Mi 43%
gretel09 2334m 14% 52190Mi 40%
gretel10 605m 3% 37128Mi 28%
gretel11 2564m 16% 51529Mi 40%
gretel13 693m 4% 86985Mi 67%
gretel14 1566m 9% 47162Mi 36%
gretel15 1870m 11% 45069Mi 35%
gretel16 2009m 12% 42307Mi 32%
gretel17 2758m 17% 51826Mi 40%
gretel19 613m 3% 42791Mi 33%
gretel20 2339m 14% 46208Mi 35%
gretel22 654m 4% 39190Mi 30%
gretel23 2001m 12% 54414Mi 42%
gretel24 1264m 7% 26617Mi 20%
gretel25 541m 3% 43809Mi 34%
gretel26 914m 5% 41056Mi 31%
gretel27 3908m 24% 38143Mi 29%
gretel29 1371m 8% 51807Mi 40%
gretel30 623m 3% 18808Mi 29%
gretel31 3176m 19% 54015Mi 41%
gretel33 841m 5% 28607Mi 44%
gretel37 3779m 23% 63097Mi 49%
hansel01 3718m 30% 50790Mi 79%
hansel02 558m 4% 27102Mi 42%
hansel03 1065m 13% 23775Mi 37%
hansel13 730m 9% 20304Mi 31%
hansel14 3016m 25% 49720Mi 77%
hansel15 3220m 26% 52838Mi 82%
hansel16 1362m 11% 32593Mi 50%
hansel17 674m 5% 26916Mi 41%
hansel18 566m 4% 21870Mi 34%
hansel19 2093m 17% 53533Mi 83%
hansel20 1968m 16% 56627Mi 88%
Last month (Nov)'s for comparison:
kubectl top nodes
NAME CPU(cores) CPU% MEMORY(bytes) MEMORY%
fairy01 3658m 22% 87044Mi 67%
fairy02 3267m 20% 65232Mi 50%
fairy03 1224m 7% 55396Mi 43%
gretel01 3652m 22% 37297Mi 28%
gretel03 421m 2% 35907Mi 27%
gretel04 608m 3% 29845Mi 23%
gretel05 587m 3% 23535Mi 18%
gretel06 744m 4% 38082Mi 29%
gretel07 402m 2% 22856Mi 17%
gretel08 1661m 10% 49540Mi 38%
gretel09 920m 5% 43201Mi 33%
gretel10 319m 1% 21543Mi 16%
gretel11 1475m 9% 41644Mi 32%
gretel13 1303m 8% 60432Mi 46%
gretel14 1517m 9% 44000Mi 34%
gretel15 479m 2% 28107Mi 21%
gretel16 352m 2% 34447Mi 26%
gretel17 1334m 8% 34171Mi 26%
gretel19 1035m 6% 26623Mi 20%
gretel20 1211m 7% 50482Mi 39%
gretel21 5014m 31% 67119Mi 52%
gretel22 386m 2% 31139Mi 24%
gretel23 1140m 7% 44163Mi 34%
gretel24 734m 4% 40900Mi 31%
gretel25 431m 2% 33155Mi 25%
gretel26 1311m 8% 46667Mi 36%
gretel27 172m 1% 19855Mi 15%
gretel28 471m 2% 19587Mi 30%
gretel29 580m 3% 33220Mi 25%
gretel30 130m 0% 10528Mi 16%
gretel31 476m 2% 26610Mi 20%
gretel32 2880m 6% 20341Mi 15%
gretel33 1395m 8% 24415Mi 38%
gretel34 997m 6% 17750Mi 27%
gretel35 480m 3% 11919Mi 9%
gretel36 583m 3% 10981Mi 8%
gretel37 626m 3% 15602Mi 12%
hansel01 660m 5% 18274Mi 28%
hansel02 607m 5% 18744Mi 29%
hansel04 877m 5% 52755Mi 40%
hansel05 1376m 8% 40599Mi 31%
hansel06 2108m 13% 26675Mi 41%
hansel07 2071m 12% 26229Mi 40%
hansel08 697m 4% 33613Mi 52%
hansel09 698m 4% 27458Mi 42%
hansel10 1825m 22% 26776Mi 41%
hansel11 570m 7% 17345Mi 27%
hansel12 713m 8% 18136Mi 28%
hansel13 222m 2% 15802Mi 24%
hansel14 978m 8% 23242Mi 36%
hansel15 2685m 22% 27754Mi 43%
hansel16 803m 6% 26732Mi 41%
hansel17 866m 7% 26238Mi 40%
hansel18 1470m 12% 17273Mi 26%
hansel19 488m 4% 24473Mi 38%
hansel20 777m 6% 21164Mi 32%
This graph represents memory usage across the entire (DE) cluster. Tenant memory usage increased 10% from the previous month, and apps which run on daemonsets (i.e., a pod on every node) showed a decrease, since excessive nodes added for Black Friday were trimmed away.
Other high consumers of RAM:
- csi-rclone: used for mounting all rclone-compatible storage mounts, primarily RealDebrid libraries
- kube-system: the Kubernetes control plane, including the cilium agents which manage the networking / policy enforcement (currently 11K flows/s across 30 nodes)
- traefik: all inbound access to the cluster / services
- mediafusion: an excellent (but RAM-hungry!) Stremio addon
kubectl top nodes
NAME CPU(cores) CPU% MEMORY(bytes) MEMORY%
fairy01 2937m 18% 76426Mi 59%
fairy02 1869m 11% 55905Mi 43%
fairy03 701m 4% 79816Mi 62%
gretel07 1011m 6% 44513Mi 34%
gretel08 3809m 23% 56575Mi 43%
gretel09 2334m 14% 52190Mi 40%
gretel10 605m 3% 37128Mi 28%
gretel11 2564m 16% 51529Mi 40%
gretel13 693m 4% 86985Mi 67%
gretel14 1566m 9% 47162Mi 36%
gretel15 1870m 11% 45069Mi 35%
gretel16 2009m 12% 42307Mi 32%
gretel17 2758m 17% 51826Mi 40%
gretel19 613m 3% 42791Mi 33%
gretel20 2339m 14% 46208Mi 35%
gretel22 654m 4% 39190Mi 30%
gretel23 2001m 12% 54414Mi 42%
gretel24 1264m 7% 26617Mi 20%
gretel25 541m 3% 43809Mi 34%
gretel26 914m 5% 41056Mi 31%
gretel27 3908m 24% 38143Mi 29%
gretel29 1371m 8% 51807Mi 40%
gretel30 623m 3% 18808Mi 29%
gretel31 3176m 19% 54015Mi 41%
gretel33 841m 5% 28607Mi 44%
gretel37 3779m 23% 63097Mi 49%
hansel01 3718m 30% 50790Mi 79%
hansel02 558m 4% 27102Mi 42%
hansel03 1065m 13% 23775Mi 37%
hansel13 730m 9% 20304Mi 31%
hansel14 3016m 25% 49720Mi 77%
hansel15 3220m 26% 52838Mi 82%
hansel16 1362m 11% 32593Mi 50%
hansel17 674m 5% 26916Mi 41%
hansel18 566m 4% 21870Mi 34%
hansel19 2093m 17% 53533Mi 83%
hansel20 1968m 16% 56627Mi 88%
Last month (Nov 2024)'s for comparison:
kubectl top nodes
NAME CPU(cores) CPU% MEMORY(bytes) MEMORY%
fairy01 3658m 22% 87044Mi 67%
fairy02 3267m 20% 65232Mi 50%
fairy03 1224m 7% 55396Mi 43%
gretel01 3652m 22% 37297Mi 28%
gretel03 421m 2% 35907Mi 27%
gretel04 608m 3% 29845Mi 23%
gretel05 587m 3% 23535Mi 18%
gretel06 744m 4% 38082Mi 29%
gretel07 402m 2% 22856Mi 17%
gretel08 1661m 10% 49540Mi 38%
gretel09 920m 5% 43201Mi 33%
gretel10 319m 1% 21543Mi 16%
gretel11 1475m 9% 41644Mi 32%
gretel13 1303m 8% 60432Mi 46%
gretel14 1517m 9% 44000Mi 34%
gretel15 479m 2% 28107Mi 21%
gretel16 352m 2% 34447Mi 26%
gretel17 1334m 8% 34171Mi 26%
gretel19 1035m 6% 26623Mi 20%
gretel20 1211m 7% 50482Mi 39%
gretel21 5014m 31% 67119Mi 52%
gretel22 386m 2% 31139Mi 24%
gretel23 1140m 7% 44163Mi 34%
gretel24 734m 4% 40900Mi 31%
gretel25 431m 2% 33155Mi 25%
gretel26 1311m 8% 46667Mi 36%
gretel27 172m 1% 19855Mi 15%
gretel28 471m 2% 19587Mi 30%
gretel29 580m 3% 33220Mi 25%
gretel30 130m 0% 10528Mi 16%
gretel31 476m 2% 26610Mi 20%
gretel32 2880m 6% 20341Mi 15%
gretel33 1395m 8% 24415Mi 38%
gretel34 997m 6% 17750Mi 27%
gretel35 480m 3% 11919Mi 9%
gretel36 583m 3% 10981Mi 8%
gretel37 626m 3% 15602Mi 12%
hansel01 660m 5% 18274Mi 28%
hansel02 607m 5% 18744Mi 29%
hansel04 877m 5% 52755Mi 40%
hansel05 1376m 8% 40599Mi 31%
hansel06 2108m 13% 26675Mi 41%
hansel07 2071m 12% 26229Mi 40%
hansel08 697m 4% 33613Mi 52%
hansel09 698m 4% 27458Mi 42%
hansel10 1825m 22% 26776Mi 41%
hansel11 570m 7% 17345Mi 27%
hansel12 713m 8% 18136Mi 28%
hansel13 222m 2% 15802Mi 24%
hansel14 978m 8% 23242Mi 36%
hansel15 2685m 22% 27754Mi 43%
hansel16 803m 6% 26732Mi 41%
hansel17 866m 7% 26238Mi 40%
hansel18 1470m 12% 17273Mi 26%
hansel19 488m 4% 24473Mi 38%
hansel20 777m 6% 21164Mi 32%
Last month's spikes on the contended nodes (hansels) turned out to be related to in-cluster backups, rather than tenant-driven load, and this misconfiguration was resolved. Hansel and Gretel traffic patterns are now more aligned to what you'd expect, comparing December to November:
Why Hansel & Gretel?
Bundles are datacenter-agnostic, but nodes are specific to each datacenter, and we needed a way to differentiate US nodes from DE nodes. The fairy tale of Hansel and Gretel originates in Germany 
Last month (Nov 2024)'s for comparison:
Retrospective
December was an intentionally quiet month with respect to changes, with the only notable changes occurring after the Christmas break.
Mooar apps
The following apps made their debut on ElfHosted during December 2024:
Flixio
Flixio is a patched instance of the official Stremio Web app, which keeps all of your watching history under your control. It also re-adds support for external players (VLC, Infuse), popular with mobile device users.
More details in this blog post
StremThru
StremThru is a debrid "multi-tool", capable of adding proxy-streaming or debrid support to any other Stremio Addon. The introduction of StremThru has also allowed us to patch the outstanding issue with Comet, which hasn't been able to serve RD/DL/AD links since the big API withdrawls in late Nov 2024.
More details in this blog post
RIP gift cards and merch
We discovered that credit card scammers were abusing our store to purchase gift cards (with different credit cards each time), and then immediately using those gift cards to buy themselves clothing from our Merch category.
Rather than face down angry victims of credit card theft, or payment processor chargebacks, we've simply removed gift cards and merch from the store for now.
Multi-debrid support
During December we progressed better coverage across multiple debrid platforms, including TorBox, AllDebrid, and Debrid-Link. There's still more to be done with Premiumize and CineSync, so look forward to more options in January 2025!
Coming up
Even mooar apps
Apps currently requested can be found (and submitted!) here
Notable suggestions:
- TitleCardMaker (CLI version for now)
- CineSync - will tidy up the debrid-facing storage mounts used with Plex, for Zurglings (and maybe offer "CineSynclings"?)
- DebriDav - will facilitate Aars working with Premiumizie
Guide / blog refresh (ongoing)
While we've completed the migration of the blog from the docs site to the store, the refreshing of our guides is still on the short-term to-do list.
Now that we have a mostly-workable theme for the store, the ElfVengers and I will be moving much of the guides from the docs site (https://elfhosted.com) to the store, since this is more suitable for frequent, collaborative edits. We've also been experimenting with ScribeHow guides, which have been a popular alternative to our video guides (modular, and much quicker to produce!)
Your ideas?
Got ideas for improvements? Send us an EEP (ElfHosted Enhancement Proposal) here!
How to help
Another effective way to help is to drive traffic / organic discovery, by mentioning ElfHosted in appropriate forums such as Reddit's r/plex, r/realdebrid, and r/StremioAddons, which is where much of our target audience is to be found!
Join us!
Want to get involved?
Want to get involved? Join us in Discord!
What users say..
Here's what some of our usersfriends say..
I am new here, but today I learned realized that Elfhosted is one of the best free and open source software communities I've seen, and FOSS communities have been at the center of my life since the 90s (Perl, PHP, Symfony, Drupal, Ethereum, etc.). Great open software built by great people who care = great community, and that is something special.
You've done an amazing job @Funky Penguelf with the platform you provide and this place has an awesome mix of active community caretakers and software creators that I've seen here so far like BSM, Spoked, LayeZee and other elf vengers. Keep up the energy, productivity and community and take time to enjoy it and appreciate each other!
@skwah (Discord)
I self host and share a fully automated ‘arr stack with Plex. Been doing so for around 4 years. Also recently got into real debrid and hosting a Comet and Annatar for Stremio. The amount of time and head banging I’ve put into it is in the hundreds to thousands of hours. From setting it up to keeping it running smoothly. Let’s not forget the cost of my server and how much it cost to keep it running.
Anyway I wanted to see what ElfHosted was about to compare. Yeah I had the whole thing setup in just a few hours. It also passes the headache of maintaining it to ElfHosted. Will I keep it no because nerdy things and maintaining my server are my hobby and quirky passion project. Will I recommend it to my friends who don’t have the money up front to buy a server, the knowledge to maintain it or desire.
Just my server alone was $2k. Power cost to keep it on yearly is $250ish, annual memberships to RD, Usenet and indexers are around $100. Then whatever a value my free time at. Which is currently at minimum my hourly pay at work or more. Yeah so take the monthly cost of all that and compare to ElfHosted Ultimate Stream package at $39 monthly, add RD to the cost and get nearly all your time back is incredibly cheap.
Lastly it seems like a lot of people forget how quickly an ultimate cable package used to cost. Or how quick paying for every stream service would add up to. Which when using ElfHosted with RD is essentially and more what you get. Quick hint it’s far above the asking price.
/u/MMag05. (Reddit)
As a happy Elfhosted customer—who also self hosts MANY things across about 10 severs (dedicated, VPSes, and VMs running on Synology), I wouldn’t switch to self hosting the services I get from Elfhosted. They just work with very little effort configuring things, and the support the owner and his team provides is second to none. Plus I love being part of a fledgling—but quickly growing—enterprise.
/u/jatguy. (Reddit)
I recently found ElfHosted and decided to start out with the Infinite Starter Kit. Within a week I realized that this was for me and upgraded to the Hobbit plan. Give it another week and I was up to the Ranger plan.
I just love the simplicity and the fact that things just work. For years I've ran a home server and between the constant maintenance and always upgrading harddrives, it became apparent I wanted to make it easier on my self. Enter ElfHosted.
Setup was super easy with the guided documentation and the discord community. It seems that somebody is available at all hours of the day to help with questions. I started with the Aars, which I knew from my prior hosting... but saw a newer product called Riven. I decided to jump in feet first. I enjoy being on the front end of an up and coming replacement for the Aars and will soon be upgrading to the annual plan!
@.theycallmebob. (Discord)
I’ve been using this service for a while now, and honestly, it’s a game-changer compared to anything else I’ve tried for managing my media library. The support is fantastic—super quick, and if the staff aren’t around (which rarely happens), the community steps up right away. I can’t imagine going back to any other platform.
Before this, I had my own setup with a NUC, NAS, and tools like Sonarr and Radarr. It worked pretty well for a while, and my internet speed was high enough to stream without any buffering. But in the end, it wasn’t worth the time or headache of managing all the storage and keeping everything running smoothly.
Now, with this service, everything runs smoothly in 1080p+ with no buffering issues. The interface is really easy to use, which makes managing everything a breeze. Plus, having a whole community of smart people available for guidance is a huge bonus.
I was sold from the start, which is why I quickly upgraded from a 1-month to a 3-month subscription, and I’m planning to switch to a 1-year plan soon. This service totally pays for itself, and I’m sure you won’t be disappointed. It’s been really impressive.
@seapound (Discord)
Best possible options for anyone looking for the do-it-all option along with the best customer service ive experienced in this space so far. Id rate it a 6 if I could but its limited to 5/5...
@hashmelters (Discord)
(responding to a Reddit thread re the cost of ElfHosted vs mainstream streaming / self-hosting):
I didn't know that the goal of this project was to compete with large companies running/renting entire DCs. I was under the impression that the goal of this project was to manage the updating of almost selfhosted applications on a shared platform with other users. Basically, be my sysadmin for me.
That being said, paying for services is the 'easy button'. There is a real world cost incurred for the time saved. Time is money. Time is the most valuable currency that exists. Once time is spent, it's forever lost, one cannot retrieve it again (yet). In my mind, there are 3 options for use of time with respect to: mainstream, selfhosting, elfhosted.
-
mainstream - my time is valuable and I don't want curated content and I don't care what content that I have the ability to consume. I only like what's popular.
-
elfhosted - my time is valuable, I want my own curated content without being forced to browse past the same damn entry 500 times just to find out that I can't watch the movie I want because it's not available in my current location or was removed last week from mainstream providers.
-
selfhost - I care about costs and I have nothing but time to waste or I want to learn about the backend of the systems involved. I'll pay for my own VPS/homelab, electricity, manage the OS, manage app updates, figure out how to make the apps talk nice to each other, create my own beautiful frontend.
I know how much my time is worth, does that reddit poster know how much their time is worth? Without knowing what you are worth, you can't make effective capital expenditures with respect to the time it will take to recoup the capital.
I know I don't need elfhosted at all for my use case. I choose to stay with elfhosted because it's my 'easy button'. It's an efficient capital expense for the amount of time it saves me managing my own hardware, apps and saves me electricity costs. I'm also in a situation where I don't have upload bandwidth from my home to serve HD content to myself remotely. If I lived back in a city, I would still be here. My time is worth $$/hr.
@cobra2 (Discord)
"Just wanted to check in here and let @Darth-Penguini and anyone/everyone else know...WOW. I have been struggling with storage for years, maintenance of Docker containers, upkeep, all of it. Elfhosted is so freeing. It's an amazing service that I hope to be a member of for a long, long time!"
@Fingers91 (Discord)
"I just have to say, I am an incredibly satisfied customer. I had been collecting my own content for nearly 20 years. Starting off with just a simple external HD before eventually graduating to a seedbox with 100TB of cloud storage attached and fully automated processes with Sonarr and Radarr . However, the time came when the glory days of unlimited Google Drive storage ended. I thought my days of having my full collection at my fingertips via :plex: were behind me, until I found Real-Debrid and ElfHosted.
Now I essentially have the exact same access to content as I had before, but even better. Superior support and community involvement. Content is available almost immediately after being identified. A plethora of tools at my fingertips that give me more control and automation than ever before. Wonderfully well done and impressive! I am looking forward to being a customer for a very long time! Massive kudos to @funkypenguin 🤟
@BSM (Discord)
"I would recommend ElfHosted to anyone. It has been great so far and made life a lot easier than running my own setups. If you’re in the fence give them a try and help support this great community."
Zestyclose_Teacher20 (Reddit)
"thanks for the help and must say this is the best host I every had for my server 🙂 10/10 🙂 All other places I have try have I got a lot buff etc. Your host can even give me full power on a 4K Remux on 200GB big movie file . That's damn awesome 😄"
@tjelite (Discord)
"What an amazing support system these guys have Chris and Layzee i think it was! Both are very patient with me even though I am a newbie at all this. Very thorough and explained everything step by step with me
I couldn’t ask for anything better than the service I have received by these guys! Happy happy client❤️"
@dead.potahto (Discord)
"Very happy customer. Great service"
@ronney67 (Discord)
"Very good customer service, frequent updates, and excelent uptime!!!!!"
@ed.guim (Discord)
"I had my own plex-arrs setup on hetzner for years. Yesterday I deleted everything as elfhosted has gone above and beyond it. And it has a fantastic, active community as well! Very friendly, helpful and like-minded folks always willing to help and improve the system. Top notch!"
@alon.hearter (Discord)
"Absolutely Amazed with the patience and professionalism of all Elf-Venger Staff including bossman penguin❤️"
@dead.potahto (Discord)
"@BSM went above and beyond to make sure I had all the one on one support needed with my sub. Thank you for your patience! Elfhosted continues to be Elftastic !!"
@bfmc1 (Discord)
"really enjoying the service from elfhosted. The setup is really easy from the guides on the website. And the help on the discord channel is really quick."
@jrhd13 (Discord)
"Support is amazing, and once you find a setup which works best for you it works perfectly, very happy 😊"
@fiendclub (Discord)
"great fast service, resolved my problem and really friendly"
@allan.st.minimum (Discord)
"Great service and sorted out a billing issue super quick and easy."
@scottcall707 (Discord)
"Very friendly support, resolved a problem with my account! I also appreciate the community that has been built around the service!"
@leo1305 (Discord)
"excellent customer service and very fast replies"
@yo.hohoho (Discord)
"Loved the simplicity, experience and support"
@y.adhish (Discord)
"Very friendly help as always, problem solved, one happy elf here!"
@badfurday0 (Discord)
"Great Helpful and Fast support. Thanks!"
@.mxrcy (Discord)