>The number one thing that I loathed about managing my own VPS, was security. A fully-fledged Linux instance, exposed to the public Internet 24/7, is a big responsibility. I don't share the view, if we consider small web sites or apps. For me, using containerized apps, having external backups of the DB, means I can reboot the app fast in a clean state if an attacker manages to break in and do nasty things. The OS and…
That of course applies if the attacker only makes it into the containerized app itself, but (assuming docker is used for containerization) Docker has had it's share of 10.0 CVEs [1], and almost every other containerization platform out there has as well. Can you really trust a machine once it has been broken into ?
Then of course there's the whole thing about the data. Nobody cares about the application or the infrastructure. If a sysadm is running the show, chances are that the server will be sitting on a DMZ network with firewall rules in place, so hopefully the network integrity is still in place. Your data however may not be, so you need backups.
Depending on how you do backups, chances are that you're using push backups, which means that somewhere on your server resides credentials that can at least alter your backup, meaning if an attacker makes it into your server neither your data or backups are safe.
> Apart from some limited cases, I think it's cheaper to have your own servers if you don't have to pay much for their administration.
If all you're hosting is small web sites or apps, some of the major cloud providers has your back for free. Azure allows 10 million hits on their Azure functions per month for free, as well as free static websites. Oracle Cloud gives you 4 ARM cores and 24GB RAM for free to use in any configuration from a 4 core VPS to 4 one core VPS', as well as a lot of other stuff including 50 IPSec connections.
There is literally no reason to run and expose any infrastructure from home anymore, especially not if it's "personal infrastructure".
> And I hate not owning my data, my apps, having to depend on a third party.
Define owning. Your data might live on a server, but if you create backups at home or somewhere else, does that not constitute ownership of the data ?
As for depending on a third party, i'd wager that your data is much safer in a professional data center with redundant internet connections, redundant power supplies, redundant hardware, geographical redundancy, fire/flood protection, physical security and 24/7 monitoring than any setup you might have made at home, or if not, you're paying way more than you need to for your home setup.
[1] https://www.cvedetails.com/vulnerability-list.php?vendor_id=...