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Screw it, I’ll host it myself

markozivanovic.com

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Re: Screw it, I’ll host it myself

#111

Post by quesera »

imwillofficial wrote: post #41
dvdkon wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ema…

It is near impossible. I did all the same things, totally valid and secure setup, gmail would never deliver. YMMV.

Two negatives: new domain names, and historically troublesome sending IP addresses.

And of course SPF, DKIM, DMARC are all prerequisites.

But if you can avoid the first two problems, hosting email yourself is rock-solid reliable and requires very little attention.

Re: Screw it, I’ll host it myself

#112

Post by thih9 »

CharlesW wrote: post #96
api wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The author of this post cites $55/month as his cost. This is wrong. If it takes him, say, two hours a month to maintain (probably conservative) then if you value those hours at $100/hour the actual cost is $255/month. The reality is probably in excess of $1000/month. This only makes sense for people who have an abundance of spare time, and that's pretty rare these days. Free software for DIY hosting like this is "fre…

"Free as in free puppy" is my other favorite metaphor. Free software is a gift to the word, but IMO it's important not to undervalue the time and expertise of operationalizing it.

It's worth remembering that you can get an expensive puppy too. I.e. choosing proprietary software doesn't mean that time and expertise won't be required.

Recent previous discussion at: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26672009 .

Re: Screw it, I’ll host it myself

#113

Post by gsreenivas »

annoyingnoob wrote: post #82

The most chilling reason for me to self-host is the third-party doctrine. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-party_doctrine You don't really own any of your cloud data, even if it feels like it. If you want to own your data then it needs to reside on private computers in private spaces - though that does not preclude you from sharing but you lose control of what you share.

This is a key reason for why I started Helm - thehelm.com. There's a lot of talk here about the hassle of self-hosting and while many HN folks are perfectly capable of running their own servers/services, it can be very time consuming. We take away the hassle and provide the benefits of self-hosting at home.

Re: Screw it, I’ll host it myself

#114

Post by slowhand09 »

api wrote: post #85
mattowen_uk wrote: post #79

Y'know what, Although I'm currently self hosting my email, my websites, my storage, my SQL, my Active Directory etc., I'm also in the process of migrating the whole lot to Azure and/or independent hosting. Why? It's just too much hassle these days; I want my down-time to be no longer dictated by my infrastructure. I don't want to have to spend off-work hours making sure my boxes are patched, my disks are raided, my o…

The author of this post cites $55/month as his cost. This is wrong. If it takes him, say, two hours a month to maintain (probably conservative) then if you value those hours at $100/hour the actual cost is $255/month. The reality is probably in excess of $1000/month. This only makes sense for people who have an abundance of spare time, and that's pretty rare these days. Free software for DIY hosting like this is "fre…

I would argue yes and no here. If those are two hrs where you are not employed making $100, then its $55. If you have to give up 2 hrs of employed time to maintain this, then yes $255.

I love my free time and there is precious little. But I don't think of it as costing ME $100/hr when I wash, dry, and detail my car, especially as I like doing it.

Re: Screw it, I’ll host it myself

#115

Post by sigg3 »

CharlesW wrote: post #96
api wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The author of this post cites $55/month as his cost. This is wrong. If it takes him, say, two hours a month to maintain (probably conservative) then if you value those hours at $100/hour the actual cost is $255/month. The reality is probably in excess of $1000/month. This only makes sense for people who have an abundance of spare time, and that's pretty rare these days. Free software for DIY hosting like this is "fre…

"Free as in free puppy" is my other favorite metaphor. Free software is a gift to the word, but IMO it's important not to undervalue the time and expertise of operationalizing it.

Free software was always intended as Libre software or Freedom software, though.

The main concern is autonomy, not economic costs.

I expect you know this already, which is why the puppy analogy sort of fails.

Re: Screw it, I’ll host it myself

#116

Post by gsreenivas »

asattarmd wrote: post #27

The most valuable thing for me is my photo library. All of them are currently in Google Photos. Is there any easy way to backup just that? I don’t care about my personal email, tasks, calendar etc. It’s just the thought of losing my photos scares me.

I suggest migrating to Nextcloud and then following the 3:2:1 methodology for preserving data - 3 copies 2 local 1 remote (encrypted offsite)

Re: Screw it, I’ll host it myself

#117

Post by TkTech »

api wrote: post #85
mattowen_uk wrote: post #79

Y'know what, Although I'm currently self hosting my email, my websites, my storage, my SQL, my Active Directory etc., I'm also in the process of migrating the whole lot to Azure and/or independent hosting. Why? It's just too much hassle these days; I want my down-time to be no longer dictated by my infrastructure. I don't want to have to spend off-work hours making sure my boxes are patched, my disks are raided, my o…

The author of this post cites $55/month as his cost. This is wrong. If it takes him, say, two hours a month to maintain (probably conservative) then if you value those hours at $100/hour the actual cost is $255/month. The reality is probably in excess of $1000/month. This only makes sense for people who have an abundance of spare time, and that's pretty rare these days. Free software for DIY hosting like this is "fre…

As a developer, all of the time I spend working on hobby projects (and self-hosting has turned into a hobby) keep me up to date. It's how I learned Kubernetes, it's how I learned Traefik, nginx, and apache before that. It's how I learned how the different packaging and distribution ecosystems work for many different languages and frameworks. I intentionally host and backup some things on AWS, GCloud, and Azure. Other things live on Intel NUCs. I administer a GSuite for the family. The list goes on and on. It gives you the chance to experiment with new tools and toys that you're unlikely to use at your current job.

My long-winded point is that all of the things I've picked up have been invaluable to me at work, especially in my time as a contractor where I would be switching between many different stacks. If you want to find a "true" cost for self-hosting, you need to also treat it as training.

I don't really believe it's any different from say, a woodworker that has a shop at home. They may spend the workday just doing framing, but odds are good they find the time to make a chair, a bird house, something to keep their skills sharp.

Re: Screw it, I’ll host it myself

#118

Post by qznc »

bndw wrote: post #18

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)

NAS fails for smartphone integration. Photos should auto upload. Calendar, todos, and contacts need to show up in the usual apps. It needs to be available from remote.

Re: Screw it, I’ll host it myself

#119

Post by shaan7 »

api wrote: post #85
mattowen_uk wrote: post #79

Y'know what, Although I'm currently self hosting my email, my websites, my storage, my SQL, my Active Directory etc., I'm also in the process of migrating the whole lot to Azure and/or independent hosting. Why? It's just too much hassle these days; I want my down-time to be no longer dictated by my infrastructure. I don't want to have to spend off-work hours making sure my boxes are patched, my disks are raided, my o…

The author of this post cites $55/month as his cost. This is wrong. If it takes him, say, two hours a month to maintain (probably conservative) then if you value those hours at $100/hour the actual cost is $255/month. The reality is probably in excess of $1000/month. This only makes sense for people who have an abundance of spare time, and that's pretty rare these days. Free software for DIY hosting like this is "fre…

Well that is only if you look at software/ops as a 100% commercial undertaking. It is not.

One way to understand why people self-host is to understand why people self-cook their food. It takes significantly longer to prepare food (get raw material, cut, cook) than ordering it. People still do it for $reasons - some find it fun, some find it cheaper, some find it nice to be able to control the taste, some find it more healthy to know whats going on their plate, and so on.

Only concentrating on the dollar cost is too narrow a view, IMO.

Re: Screw it, I’ll host it myself

#120

Post by divbzero »

belval wrote: post #68
FunnyLookinHat wrote: post #4

The diagram alone is more than enough of an argument to dissuade me from giving this a shot right now - it's simply too complicated and too much to manage for the amount of time I can dedicate to it. BUT - I'm really thankful for people who keep posting and sharing these sorts of projects; they're the ones iterating the process for the rest of us who need something a bit more turn-key. I'm excited to see this eventua…

I think the diagram gives a skewed view of how hard this actually is. I run a very similar setup only my VPS is only a proxy for my home server and it requires very little maintenance. I run everything with docker-compose and I haven't had to work on my setup at all this year and only about 8 hours in 2020 to setup the Wireguard network to replace the ssh tunnels I was using previously for VPS -> server communication…

Yes, and many popular applications are prepackaged as one-click apps by cloud providers like Vultr [1] or Digital Ocean [2].

[1]: https://www.vultr.com/features/one-click-apps/

[2]: https://marketplace.digitalocean.com

You can also enable automatic backups for your servers.

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