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

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

#201

Post by lbriner »

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…

2) I think this is a bit like asking, "Why isn't there a comprehensive guide to art"

Infra is massively complicated. Not only do you have competing frameworks/modules, you also have these change in different releases of Linux. Some of these are simpler, some are more comprehensive. Some are really hard to use but powerful/well-maintained, others are simple but might not be so good. Some perform well at a cost, others might perform relatively less well but are easier. Sometimes it is worth the effort setting up ufw on a server, sometimes it isn't.

BY the time you got to something that was simple enough to create a guide from, and which didn't change each week when some vendor renames a configuration option, it would be very high-level and possibly not very useful.

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

#202

Post by Tehchops »

laydn wrote: post #84
progx wrote: post #13

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…

A few months ago, I made an offer of $100 in one of the freelancing websites, for someone to set-up something like your configuration on one of my Digital Ocean instances. I asked for a few more apps to be installed (git, svn, etc). There were no takers :-) I think a web site/service which lets you choose "apps" and spawns a VPS instance would be very useful and profitable (Think "ninite for VPS"). I started to work…

Whether or not you classify it as “easy” isn’t relevant. You hit the nail on the head in the prior sentence: “time” is the issue, and you’re asking someone to trade their time for a pittance.

FWIW I’d charge way more than $100/hr for this work.

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

#203

Post by nurettin »

Tehchops wrote: post #202
laydn wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few months ago, I made an offer of $100 in one of the freelancing websites, for someone to set-up something like your configuration on one of my Digital Ocean instances. I asked for a few more apps to be installed (git, svn, etc). There were no takers :-) I think a web site/service which lets you choose "apps" and spawns a VPS instance would be very useful and profitable (Think "ninite for VPS"). I started to work…

Whether or not you classify it as “easy” isn’t relevant. You hit the nail on the head in the prior sentence: “time” is the issue, and you’re asking someone to trade their time for a pittance. FWIW I’d charge way more than $100/hr for this work.

I think they mean that if you already have the setup as a provisioning script all you would need to do is to modify it a little, run it and get cash in return.

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

#204

Post by Spivak »

goodpoint wrote: post #37
progx wrote: post #13

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…

easy ? Is this sarcasm?

It’s super easy. Like literally would take someone who’s worked in infra an evening to set this all up and then a Sunday morning to have it automated in Ansible.

It’s a single server running a few containers with config files. The complexity comes when you outgrow a single machine or need stronger availability guarantees but none of that matters for a single-ish user setup.

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

#205

Post by Ameo »

vaxman wrote: post #12

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.

This seems to be the RAM they're provisioned it with: https://www.samsung.com/semiconductor/dram/module/M393A2K40B...

It doesn't look to be ECC.

> Why do you RAID-1 NVMe

That's what they set it up with when I first rented the server. What makes them likely to fail simultaneously, out of curiosity? I do backup everything irreplaceable as much as I can; I've not had to do it but theoretically I'd should be able to re-build everything from scratch with a day or two of effort.

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

#206

Post by heurisko »

jlkuester7 wrote: post #115
nicoburns wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

This 1000%. It was amazing how much more comfortable I was with my suite of VPS's when I moved them from AWS to Digital Ocean! I always describe on-boarding with AWS as "drinking from a firehouse". There is so much to understand and it is hard to tell what you should actually care about. DO, on the other hand, has a much simpler set of services that seem much more applicable to 'non-enterprise' usage. (Plus the docum…

Amazon tried to emulate Digital Ocean with Lightsail.

It does feel a bit like a Cinderella service however. The versions of the managed databases you can connect are sometimes several years old.

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

#207

Post by lumost »

Nextgrid wrote: post #177
lumost wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Generally, application level decisions will have a bigger influence on cost than underlying compute storage for large data processing applications. Tradeoffs that will dominate the costs 1. Are you using a fast language or a slow language? (10-100x cost difference) 2. Are you using an efficient storage format such as parquet? (10-100x cost difference) 3. Are you using a reasonably efficient query planner job processo…

What about the cost of optimizing the process? If compute can be obtained very cheap elsewhere, it may be cheaper to just use that with an inefficient process rather than spend time/money optimizing the process and then running it on expensive compute.

Depends,

Cloud providers cut compute/storage costs every few years. You can get long term contracts with them that have heavy discounts for guaranteed spend. Switching compute instance types is pretty cheap, and switching compute platforms is relatively low cost when the time comes. Meaning that investors can generally expect your compute costs to fall YoY all else being equal.

Building out your own compute generally means adding new headcount to deal with colo things such as vender management, technical details such as networking, capes/opex management, and finally hardware selection. The odds that the hardware you select perfectly matches the compute you need in 2 years is low. The odds that a cloud provider has made a cheaper compute option in 2 years are moderate. The odds that your app needs something that’s available trivially in a cloud provider are high.

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

#208

Post by db65edfc7996 »

whoevercares wrote: post #157
FpUser wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 scrip…

Playing devil’s delegate with a normal process how we launch new service in big tech: 1. Have you done a security review and ideally pen-testing from a 3rd party? Are you fully TLS from end to end, are you aware of any exploitable vector from your API/UI and how you mitigate them 2. How do you handle software patching and vulnerabilities? 3. Do you consider your app Operational ready? Can you rollback, do you audit c…

To beelzebub the devil...how many large scale hacks/data leaks/embarrassment from large companies are because of a misconfigured S3 bucket?

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

#209

Post by vangelis »

t-3 wrote: post #64
bryanrasmussen wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think just the typical evaluation of someone with expertise in doing something, it's easy if you're a real devops kind, then just put together a bunch of things, do some config files, write a make or two, take two or three hours to do something that the rest of use take a week to do. in the same way that I might set up a service to scrape XML files and fill up my ElasticSearch search instance, and take a couple hou…

"Easy" is probably because it boils down to, install X, Y, Z, edit config for X, Y, Z, start daemons X, Y, Z. There's no complex math or thinking involved, just plugging stuff in.

Rebuilding a transmission is easy in the same way, undo some bolts, replace some parts, press in some seals, and screw some bolts back in!

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

#210

Post by smallnamespace »

justin_oaks wrote: post #160
kilroy123 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is _very_ close to my exact setup. Though, I never used portainer (just manage a big docker-compose file) is it worth it?

Portainer does make certain tasks much easier. I use Portainer to clean up any Docker volumes, containers, and images I no longer need. Doing that for a lot of Docker resources using the command line gets old really fast. I say this as someone who uses docker and docker-compose extensively and I'm very comfortable with a CLI.

Can't you:

  docker system prune
with perhaps a filtering flag attached?
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