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Why Self-Host?

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Re: Why Self-Host?

#31

Post by pauleee »

throw-10-8 wrote: post #19

He mentions nextcloud, has anyone been self-hosting this for a small org with 100-200 users?

Kinda. I use managed Nextcloud by Hetzner (StorageShare) for ~20 people with their smallest instance (1TB, 4.50 EUR/month) and connected it with a Collabora hosted on the smallest Hetzner VPS (this could use more cores).

If you wanna self-host completly look at https://github.com/nextcloud/all-in-one . I have this running on my NAS for other stuff, but it just works out of the box.

Edit: and it scales. Orgs with a lot more people use it for 10k users or more. And it doesn't need a 100 EUR/month setup, from what I experienced.

Re: Why Self-Host?

#32

Post by neoromantique »

abdullahkhalids wrote: post #27

20 years ago grandpa could go to limewire.com, download setup.exe and click next->next->next to install a fully functional file hosting server+client. It was so easy that 1/3rd of world's computers had limewire installed in 2007 [1]. ONE FUCKING THIRD! Today, to install even the simplest self-hosted software, one has to be effectively a professional software engineer. Use SSH, Use Docker, use tailscale, understand TL…

>No idea why self-hosted software isn't `apt-get install` and forget. Just like Limewire. But that's the reason no one self-hosts.

Security.

As an avid self-hoster with a rack next to my desk, I shudder as I read your comment, unfortunately.

Re: Why Self-Host?

#33

Post by thire »

I have been so happy moving out of Google Photos and storing everything on my NAS + cloud backup. I don't have to worry about Google re-encoding my videos and not letting me get my originals back.

Re: Why Self-Host?

#34

Post by AlfeG »

abdullahkhalids wrote: post #27

20 years ago grandpa could go to limewire.com, download setup.exe and click next->next->next to install a fully functional file hosting server+client. It was so easy that 1/3rd of world's computers had limewire installed in 2007 [1]. ONE FUCKING THIRD! Today, to install even the simplest self-hosted software, one has to be effectively a professional software engineer. Use SSH, Use Docker, use tailscale, understand TL…

Not as click click click, but still awesome - copyparty

Re: Why Self-Host?

#35

Post by neoromantique »

isodev wrote: post #25
codegeek wrote: post #21

"start self-hosting more of your personal services." I would make the case that you should also self host more as a small Software/SAAS business and it is not quite the boogeyman that a lot of cloud vendors want you to think. Here is why. Most software projects/businesses don't require the scale and complexity for which you truly need the cloud vendors and their expertise. For example, you don't need Vercel to deploy…

And there is an extra perk: Unlike cloud services, system skills and knowledge are portable. Once you learn how systemd or ufw or ssh works, you can apply it to any other system. I’d even go as far as to say that the time/cost required to say learn the quirks of Docker and containers and layering builds is higher than what is needed to learn how to administer a website on a Debian server.

>I’d even go as far as to say that the time/cost required to say learn the quirks of Docker and containers and layering builds is higher than what is needed to learn how to administer a website on a Debian server.

But that is irrelevant as Docker brings more to the table that a simple Debian server cannot by design. One could argue that lxd is sufficient for these, but that is even more hassle than Docker.

Re: Why Self-Host?

#36

Post by kijin »

xnx wrote: post #6

Defining "self-host" so narrowly as meaning that the software has to run on a server in your home closet ensures that it will always remain niche and insignificant. We should encourage anything that's not SaaS: open source non-subscription phone apps, plain old installable software that runs on Windows, cloud apps that can easily be run (and moved) between different hosts, etc. Anything that prevents lock-in and give…

At the very least, it should include colocating your server with somebody else who has better power and connectivity. As long as you have root, it's your server.

Re: Why Self-Host?

#37

Post by Pooge »

abdullahkhalids wrote: post #27

20 years ago grandpa could go to limewire.com, download setup.exe and click next->next->next to install a fully functional file hosting server+client. It was so easy that 1/3rd of world's computers had limewire installed in 2007 [1]. ONE FUCKING THIRD! Today, to install even the simplest self-hosted software, one has to be effectively a professional software engineer. Use SSH, Use Docker, use tailscale, understand TL…

> No idea why self-hosted software isn't `apt-get install` and forget.

Some of it is. But as soon as you want your services to be accessible from the Internet, you need to have a domain name and HTTPS. To run Limewire or a BitTorrent client, you don't need a domain name yourself because you use a central server (in the case of BitTorrent, a tracker) to help you discover peers.

Re: Why Self-Host?

#38

Post by MrZander »

abdullahkhalids wrote: post #27

20 years ago grandpa could go to limewire.com, download setup.exe and click next->next->next to install a fully functional file hosting server+client. It was so easy that 1/3rd of world's computers had limewire installed in 2007 [1]. ONE FUCKING THIRD! Today, to install even the simplest self-hosted software, one has to be effectively a professional software engineer. Use SSH, Use Docker, use tailscale, understand TL…

I don't think many people would consider limewire to be "self-hosting". That is just installing a program.

Re: Why Self-Host?

#39

Post by tamimio »

Self hosting is great, but I am more interested in decentralized technology, whether as services or even radio. I think in the near future the world will experience major disruptions, technical, financial, or even political, that centralized solutions are rendered useless, and the average person would rather have a local connection instead (local as in both topology and physical medium, so you have your own wifi station serving the neighborhood for example), and of course self hosting will be part of it, but there should be protocols that support it either in software or hardware, so it would be great for example you host your xyz chat server instance and within the client side (phones for example) you switch to local mode in the app and connect to local server. I know some applications have already implemented this but not yet adopted and still too niche for the average person, let alone for other services besides chats. Some have already caught the potential and started making ideas around it, bitchat is an example, but relying on Bluetooth won't really do it in my opinion, instead, users would be having their own 5G BTS managed and operated locally, with an option to connect to nearby 5G networks, or similar tech like wimax.

Re: Why Self-Host?

#40

Post by jasode »

simonw wrote: post #3

The existence of Tailscale has made me a lot less scared of self-hosing than I used to be, since it provides a method of securing access that's both robust and easy to setup. ... but I still worry about backups. Having encrypted off-site backups is essential for this to work, and they need to be frequently tested as well. There are good tools for that too (I've had good experiences with restic to Cloudflare B2) but a…

>... but I still worry about backups.

For me, it's not just off-site backups, it's also the operational risks if I'm not around which I wrote about previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39526863

In addition to changing my mind about self-hosting email, my most recent adventure was self-hosting Bitwarden/Vaultwarden for passwords management. I got everything to work (SSL certificates, re-startable container scripts to survive server reboots, etc) ... but I didn't like the resultant complexity. There was also the random unreliability because a new iOS client would break Vaultwarden and you'd have to go to github and download the latest bugfix. There's no way for my friend to manage that setup. She didn't want to pay for a 1Passord subscription so we switched to KeePass.

I'm still personally ok with self-hosting some low-stakes software like a media server where outages don't really matter. But I'm now more risk-averse with self-hosting critical email and passwords.

EDIT to reply: >Bitwarden client works fine if server goes down, you just can't edit data

I wasn't talking about the scenario of a self-hosted Vaultwarden being temporarily down. (Although I also didn't like that the smartphone clients will only work for 30-days offline[1] which was another decision factor to not stay on it.)

Instead, the issue is Bitwarden will make some changes to both their iOS client and their own "official" Bitwarden servers which is incompatible with Vaultwarden. This happens because they have no reason to test it on an "unofficial" implementation such as Vaultwarden. That's when you go to the Vaultwarden Github "Issues" tab and look for a new git commit with whatever new Rust code makes it work with the latest iOS client again. It doesn't happen very frequently, but it happened often enough that it makes it only usable for a techie (like me) to babysit. I can't inflict that type of random broken setup on the rest of my family. Vaultwarden is not set-and-forget. (I'm also not complaining about Bitwarden or Vaultwarden and those projects are fine. I'm just being realistic about how the self-hosted setup can't work without my IT support.)

[1] Offline access in Bitwarden client only works for 30 days. : https://bitwarden.com/blog/configuring-bitwarden-clients-for...

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