Does Fly.io support launching many short-lived fly machines, like for builds?

[tlpuse]

Does Fly.io support launching many short-lived fly machines, like for running builds? What rate limits and other problems might apply, and does anyone have prior experience doing that? Could the limits be raised?

Thanks so much!

[halfer]

The “App Builders” from Depot already do this, if you mean building Docker images.

But if you want to do generalised build work, and your build will work in Docker, then yes. You can start machines remotely and you can get them to auto-delete once they exit. I’m doing this for a web crawler, but your image can do anything you like.

The rate limits are noted here.

[tlpuse]

Thanks halfer, did you need to request quota increases on running machines, like with AWS?

[halfer]

I’ve not, no, but then I’ve not needed a high creation rate. I’d say that for builds, if you have a queue, you could process it relatively slowly. There probably isn’t a need to create machines more than once a second for this purpose.

[travtarr]

They’ve recommended in the past to create a pool of machines, then just start/stop them as needed.The only cost for stopped machines is a minor rootfs storage cost.

In the first link they’ve also stated that there may be a time in the future where that may not be required (to manage your own pool) which seems to imply that rate limits might be eased.

In regards to rate limits, they have posted a few times that its a hard rate limit. I don’t remember all the threads where they talked about this but there are more if you’re able to do some searching.

• Is it possible to bump Machines API rate limits? - #2 by kylemclaren

[mayailurus]

@travtarr

they have posted a few times that its a hard rate limit. I don’t remember all the threads where they talked about this

Here’s another one of the big ones, in my opinion; it says a lot more about the actual machines.dev → rate limiter → flaps → flyd internals:

@tvdfly

envoy makes it easy for us to sprinkle in generous rate limiting and other features to keep the service available for you and everyone else.

@tlpuse

did you need to request quota increases on running machines, like with AWS?

If this is the number of Machines simultaneously existing (as opposed to the number of starts or creations), then a person does need to contact Fly.io if they want ≥20 (or so).

Some posters in the forum have mentioned having a thousand running at once, so this other limit is more of a question of the platform requiring notice in advance…