Lobsters completes migration from MariaDB to SQLite

The community site Lobsters has completed its migration from MariaDB to SQLite, establishing it as the permanent database architecture. The project had been planning this transition since August 2018, initially targeting PostgreSQL before shifting focus to SQLite last year.

• CPU and memory usage have decreased, resulting in a snappier site experience for users.
• Hosting costs are reduced by half after taking down the MariaDB VPS.
• The application now runs on a single VPS with a primary 3.8GB content database, alongside separate cache, queue, and rack_attack databases.

This migration demonstrates that SQLite can effectively handle production workloads on a single server, offering significant operational simplicity and cost savings.