Self-Hosting Dozens of Web Applications and Services on a Single Server • Hacker News Board

Re: Self-Hosting Dozens of Web Applications and Services on a Single Server

#11

Post by padde » Fri, Dec 31, 2021, 10:37 AM UTC

YPPH wrote: post #8

>I have all my HTTPS certificates issued + managed via letsencrypt. It's a terrific service; all I have to do is run snap run certonly --nginx every 3 months and everything is taken care of automatically. Hopefully through cron and not manual invokation! Certbot can safely be executed daily by cron, as it will only attempt renewal if it is required. Automating certificate renewal is an very important step in ensuring…

Except when restarting the services that rely on the certificate doesn't work reliably... but yeah, needs to be automated.

Re: Self-Hosting Dozens of Web Applications and Services on a Single Server

#12

Post by vaxman » Fri, Dec 31, 2021, 10:45 AM UTC

Is your 64MB memory ECC?

Why do you RAID-1 NVMe? They are likely to fail simultaneously so maybe make them independent and schedule regular backups from one volume to the other, or to a remote disk drive somewhere.

Re: Self-Hosting Dozens of Web Applications and Services on a Single Server

#13

Post by progx » Fri, Dec 31, 2021, 10:47 AM UTC

Easy setup with:

- traefik (nginx proxy with auto letscencrypt)

- portainer (docker container management)

- fail2ban (basic security)

- logwatch (server / security stats by mail)

- munin (server stats)

- restic (cloud backup)

- unattended-upgrades (auto install security updates)

- apticron (weekly info)

- n8n (automatisation for e.g. quick info via telegram, if something not work)

Run every app that you want in your container.

Re: Self-Hosting Dozens of Web Applications and Services on a Single Server

#14

Post by fersarr » Fri, Dec 31, 2021, 10:50 AM UTC

js4ever wrote: post #2

I went the opposite direction, 1 vm per service. It's much easier to secure, backup, restore thanks to full isolation.

Me too. Yesterday I was trying to add a second app (3 docker-compose services) to one of my 5$/mo droplets and it started impacting and slowing down the other app. Debugging was harder too and could affect both... Perhaps at some point I'll try it again.

Re: Self-Hosting Dozens of Web Applications and Services on a Single Server

#15

Post by fersarr » Fri, Dec 31, 2021, 10:51 AM UTC

Great post! Thanks for sharing all the details.

Re: Self-Hosting Dozens of Web Applications and Services on a Single Server

#16

Post by jareware » Fri, Dec 31, 2021, 10:59 AM UTC

Echoing the sentiment here, this is a great way to host smaller projects on the cheap, without adding the complexity/price of k8s, Nomad et al!

I do the same, and have spent some time automating the backup of such a set of standalone containers [0], in case others also find it useful.

[0] https://github.com/jareware/docker-volume-backup

Re: Self-Hosting Dozens of Web Applications and Services on a Single Server

#17

Post by timwis » Fri, Dec 31, 2021, 11:02 AM UTC

Nice! I do something similar for a few production applications, but I use docker compose to bring the services up, so I don’t have to create the networks manually or remember all the command arguments. Works great.

Re: Self-Hosting Dozens of Web Applications and Services on a Single Server

#18

Post by nodlija » Fri, Dec 31, 2021, 11:06 AM UTC

Instead of recording the “docker run“ commands, you might want to have a look at docker-compose

Re: Self-Hosting Dozens of Web Applications and Services on a Single Server

#19

Post by rakoo » Fri, Dec 31, 2021, 11:11 AM UTC

rapnie wrote: post #7

There's projects like Yunohost [0] and Freedombox [1] that aim to make all this easier for the average person. Interested to hear about more such software projects. [0] https://yunohost.org [1] https://freedombox.org

I've been using yunohost for a few months and nothing could be easier. I wish more guides would spread the word about it instead of promoting manual installation of multiple packages involving the command line and debugging.

Re: Self-Hosting Dozens of Web Applications and Services on a Single Server

#20

Post by tweetle_beetle » Fri, Dec 31, 2021, 11:13 AM UTC

Really good write up and always nice to see the honesty about past mistakes. For those without time to get hands quite as dirty, like me, I've found that CapRover[1] gives just enough UI to fiddle while having sensible defaults.

[1] https://caprover.com/