Screw it, I’ll host it myself • Hacker News Board

Re: Screw it, I’ll host it myself

#11

Post by louwrentius » Wed, Apr 07, 2021, 3:25 PM UTC

I like the article and I agree with the sentiment.

I think that self-hosting can be quite a bit of effort, but a tool like Ansible makes it so much easier.

Whatever you choose to do, the most important thing is that you create data(base) backups and store those in an environment that you can control at all times.

There needs to be a viable exit strategy, just a backup is not enough if it takes more time to restore operations/service than is viable from a business perspective.

Perform at least a risk analysis, whatever you choose, make it a conscious, deliberate decision.

Re: Screw it, I’ll host it myself

#12

Post by 14TheLamb » Wed, Apr 07, 2021, 3:29 PM UTC

But what will you do if people aren't telling you exactly how to run your life and your setup? I certainly appreciate the effort and will be digging into this. I'm so sick of the tyranny. I've started my own 'disconnect' plan, and this is giving me a lot of ideas. I've already deleted Facebook, Amazon (that was a hard one), and well on my way to independence. Google is next, and like another commenter I'm using Proton mail now exclusively. Kudos for your efforts to help those of us that are really struggling right now - much appreciated.

Re: Screw it, I’ll host it myself

#13

Post by lawwantsin17 » Wed, Apr 07, 2021, 3:29 PM UTC

Are you hosting it yourself or are you hosting it with various cloud and Paas companies that just aren't Amazon? Because I read the article and it's the definitely the later. Nice try. Bad headline.

Re: Screw it, I’ll host it myself

#14

Post by thegeekbin » Wed, Apr 07, 2021, 3:31 PM UTC

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #10

I successfully extricated myself from Gmail to ProtonMail, only to be getting dragged back to Office 365 due to ProtonMail not having a working calendar and FastMail not supporting calendar sharing (to non-FastMail users) or delegation.

ProtonMail Calendar works fine now... give it a shot?

Re: Screw it, I’ll host it myself

#15

Post by thedanbob » Wed, Apr 07, 2021, 3:32 PM UTC

12ian34 wrote: post #8

I'm curious as to for how long you've been using this setup specifically in regard to Nextcloud, and how many and what volume of files you store in it? I've set up a few Nextcloud instances in the last 2 years on Digital Ocean VPSs and Raspberry Pis and I ran into so many problems and difficulties which scaled with the quantity and size of files I hosted on it. I took care in setting up everything to a relatively sol…

When I was picking a self-hosted Dropbox alternative, I ended up going with Seafile rather than Nextcloud since it was a lot more focused (just file sync) and people said it was much faster. It's got a few rough edges but the core functionality has been rock solid. Granted, I've only had about 100 GB max stored in it.

Re: Screw it, I’ll host it myself

#16

Post by syntheticnature » Wed, Apr 07, 2021, 3:32 PM UTC

planb wrote: post #9

Funny headline, because every time I try to self-host anything important like mail, I learn how deep that field is and how little I know and that I'll probably need many many hours to do everything right and in a secure way (and my mails would still have a higher probability to be classified as spam). Then I think: "Screw it, I'll just use GMail"

Interestingly, it doesn't look like the author is self-hosting email. I know mail-in-a-box exists, but even with that I find it's worth the peace of mind to pay someone else for mail hosting.

Re: Screw it, I’ll host it myself

#17

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Apr 07, 2021, 3:34 PM UTC

planb wrote: post #9

Funny headline, because every time I try to self-host anything important like mail, I learn how deep that field is and how little I know and that I'll probably need many many hours to do everything right and in a secure way (and my mails would still have a higher probability to be classified as spam). Then I think: "Screw it, I'll just use GMail"

[deleted]

Re: Screw it, I’ll host it myself

#18

Post by bndw » Wed, Apr 07, 2021, 3:35 PM UTC

IMO you can get 90% of the utility here (owning your data) with just the NAS and rsync.

1. Don't feed the FAANG

2. Store your SoR media, notes, documents on your own NAS

3. Automate a backup of the NAS, preferably both on and off site (I use rsync from a pi + large disk + cloud blob storage)

Re: Screw it, I’ll host it myself

#19

Post by andrejserafim » Wed, Apr 07, 2021, 3:36 PM UTC

12ian34 wrote: post #8

I'm curious as to for how long you've been using this setup specifically in regard to Nextcloud, and how many and what volume of files you store in it? I've set up a few Nextcloud instances in the last 2 years on Digital Ocean VPSs and Raspberry Pis and I ran into so many problems and difficulties which scaled with the quantity and size of files I hosted on it. I took care in setting up everything to a relatively sol…

Syncthing is great! Are you using zerotier for transport security. Or does it improve speed as well? Off-site syncs are far too slow for me. Luckily, it's very rare that I have to do them.

Re: Screw it, I’ll host it myself

#20

Post by dvdkon » Wed, Apr 07, 2021, 3:36 PM UTC

planb wrote: post #9

Funny headline, because every time I try to self-host anything important like mail, I learn how deep that field is and how little I know and that I'll probably need many many hours to do everything right and in a secure way (and my mails would still have a higher probability to be classified as spam). Then I think: "Screw it, I'll just use GMail"

Regarding email, I spent some tens of hours setting it up, including implementing DKIM, DMARC, SPF and getting my mail delivered to Gmail and O365. That was over a year ago and things mostly just work with the occasional upgrade or configuration change. You could also save a lot of time by going with a pre-packaged solution. I understand if you don't have time for that, but at least in my experience, self-hosting email isn't the impossible task it's sometimes made out to be.