Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

cprimozic.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 285 posts

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

#71

Post by adamddev1 »

kalev wrote: post #68

Be careful with docker and ufw though! Any rules you setup in ufw will be ignored by docker, so exposing a container will always open it up to the public even if you specifically denied access through ufw.

Very good point, I didn't know this almost got burned by this while learning Docker. What I did was use shared network (for private db connection etc) in a docker-compose file, and then expose the port I wanted to reverse proxy out on by

    ports:
        - 127.0.0.1:3000:3000
This way it only exposes it to the local host on the machine without exposing it on the firewall. Then I reverse proxied out port 3000 with NGINX to the outside world. I'm surprised this isn't talked about more in beginner tutorials etc.

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

#72

Post by nicoburns »

exhaze wrote: post #66

Three independent, but somewhat related thoughts on this topic: 1). On HOWTO articles about infra (1/2): I'd like to see more articles that lead with requirements, rather than setups that then justify the setup with requirements. Like, congrats, you managed to host a bunch of web applications via containers on a dedicated server. It's really nice for a super personal project and I'm sure it helped OP gain a lot of op…

The problem with AWS is that you can’t really do anything without understanding 1. IAM, and 2. VPCs/networking. And these are probably the two most complicated parts. For DIY you’re probably best off avoiding AWS

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

#73

Post by Aeolun »

tweetle_beetle wrote: post #20

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/

The only negative about caprover I’ve found is the distinction between containers with persistent storage and not. I don’t want to recreate my whole app just to add persistent storage.

Otherwise I’ve been using it without issue for months now.

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

#77

Post by FpUser »

exhaze wrote: post #66

Three independent, but somewhat related thoughts on this topic: 1). On HOWTO articles about infra (1/2): I'd like to see more articles that lead with requirements, rather than setups that then justify the setup with requirements. Like, congrats, you managed to host a bunch of web applications via containers on a dedicated server. It's really nice for a super personal project and I'm sure it helped OP gain a lot of op…

There is a life beyond AWS. I host applications (including ones responsible for 10s of millions in revenue) on dedicated servers rented from Hetzner and OVH. Do not even do containers as my normal deployment is server per particular business (with standby) and the cost of renting a dedicated server comparatively to revenue is microscopic. CI/CD / setup from scratch / backup / restore is handled by a single bash script and has virtually zero administration overhead. For my model I see zero business benefits doing anything on cloud. I did some deployments on Azure due to a particular client requesting it but management overhead was way higher and do not even start on costs vs performance.

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

#78

Post by throwaway984393 »

southerntofu wrote: post #50
bottled_poe wrote: post #43

It’s a good setup, but the question is why run this many services on one machine? The risk profile is too great in my opinion. The software/uptime maintenance effort to keep all users happy would far outweigh the cost of using essentially the same setup with a Kubernetes layer over a few servers. This setup only makes sense for experiments, portfolio, etc.

What's the "risk profile" and why is it too great? Kubernetes requires dedicated knowledge and can fail in surprising ways. Using a simple server with some established technology can be surprisingly/boringly reliable. Some hosts can reach incredible scale with a just few beefy dedicated machines, given the right software architecture.

The fact that it's a dedicated physical host means that any of a dozen components could fail and bring the box down permanently. The hosting company would have to reassign or build a new server for the customer, which could take from an hour to a week (or more in a pandemic with scarce parts). It depends on their excess capacity and on the machine's specifications.

If it was one virtual machine I'd say, sure, just use one box, you can bring up a new one automated in 10 minutes. But if it's physical, it could either last 10 years without going down, or 10 weeks, you never know. Physical machines is precisely the time to use a distributed system as a hedge against expensive failures.

Another consideration is cost; at $1200/year you could just keep buying servers and Colo them. It's more work but you get more (old) hardware to play with.

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

#79

Post by BeefWellington »

lucb1e wrote: post #62
southerntofu wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's great, but from an ecological perspective, repurposing second-hand hardware will always have more benefits than producing new "green" hardware, as most of the energy spent across the lifecycle of a computer happens during production. Buying a raspberry pi for selfhosting is certainly not greener than repurposing your old desktop/laptop. Although i have to admit the economic incentives are skewed due to foundri…

Where did you read that? It doesn't sound implausible, but if we're talking 70W idle for a 24/7 server, that does add up so I'd be interested in where the cut-off point is. Edit: just realized the 70W figure is in a sibling thread, not a (grand)parent, but I'm still interested regardless!

From the environment perspective, it also really matters where that 70W comes from generation-wise. If you're in an area that primarily uses Nuclear or things like Wind, Solar, Hydro, or Geothermal, that 70W of electricity isn't going to be particularly bad for the environment compared to places where it comes from Oil, Coal, or Natural Gas plants.

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

#80

Post by thatwasunusual »

maxicarlos08 wrote: post #74

Hehe, have been doing that on my Raspberry Pi 4 for years now - Nextcloud - Gitlab - A bunch of websites hosted under different domains - Matrix homeserver And the load is still surprisingly low

> And the load is still surprisingly low

Which means that you have some extremely unpopular services running...? :) /s

(Happy new year!)

Post reply on HN