I have collected a few of the posts... I have lagged behind on a few things (object storage, migrating pictrs database to postgres, upgrade to 0.19.4), so I am trying to catch up and during this process I will see if I can implement their solutions.
I have also noticed a generally slower experience when using the instance.. After I move the files to the much cheaper object storage I will be able to allocate more resources to RAM, CPU, and bandwidth. I was under the impression that the slow federation could be related to this decrease in performance, but from what I have read now it seems that it happens independent from this.