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Why Self-Host?

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Re: Why Self-Host?

#51

Post by codegeek »

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.

Well said. For me, "how to administer a website on a Debian server" is a must if you work in Web Dev because hosting a web app should not require you to depend on anyone else.

Re: Why Self-Host?

#52

Post by codegeek »

bluGill wrote: post #41
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…

A small business should onlyself host if they are a hosting company. everyone else should pay their local small business self hosting company to host for them. This is not a job for the big guys. You want someone local who will take care of you. They also come when a computer fails, ensuring updates are applied to them. Not by come I mean physically sending a human to you. This will cost some money but you should be…

I meant a small software/SAAS business. I would agree with you about a non software business. Edited my comment.

Re: Why Self-Host?

#53

Post by therealfiona »

thayne wrote: post #20

I wish articles like this would include recommendations on how to choose hardware to run your self-hosted services on.

What ever you have laying around is a great starting point.

It all comes down to what you want to spend vs what you want to host and how you want to host it.

You could build a raspberry pi docker swarm cluster and get very far. Heck, a single Pi 5 with 4gb of memory will get you on your way. Or you could use an old computer and get just as far. Or you could use a full blown rack mount server with a real IPMI. Or you could use a VPS and accomplish the same thing in the cloud.

Re: Why Self-Host?

#54

Post by BinaryIgor »

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…

Exactly; but I would rather say that you don't need CDN unless you have tens of thousands of requests per second and your user base is global; single powerful machine can easily handle thousands and tens of thousands of requests per second

Re: Why Self-Host?

#55

Post by jopsen »

jimangel2001 wrote: post #44

My selfhosted stack includes: 1. immich 2. jellyfin 3. ghost 4. wallabag 5. freshrss 6. vaultwarden 7. nextcloud 8. overleaf/sharelatex 9. matrix server 10. pds for atproto

How do you upgrade to new versions?

How do ship security patches?

How do backup? And do you regularly test your backup?

I feel like upgrade instructions for some software can be extremely light, or require you to upgrade through each version, or worse.

Re: Why Self-Host?

#56

Post by dlisboa »

arich wrote: post #45
neoromantique wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

The core point is valid. As someone who self hosts, it's become so complicated to get the most basic functionality setup that someone with little to no knowledge would really struggle whereas years ago it was much simpler. Functionally now we can do much more but practically, we've regressed.

Putting something on the Internet by yourself has always been outside the reach of a non-tech person. Years ago regular people weren't deploying globally available complex software from their desktops either.

Re: Why Self-Host?

#57

Post by kijin »

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…

> No need for CDN etc unless you are talking about millions of requests per day.

Both caddy and nginx can handle 100s of millions of static requests per day on any off-the-shelf computer without breaking a sweat. You will run into network capacity issues long before you are bottlenecked by the web server software.

Re: Why Self-Host?

#58

Post by R_Spaghetti »

You write: I'm fortunate enough to work at a company (enum.co) where digital sovereignty is not just a phrase.

info.addr.tools shows [1]: MX 1 smtp.google.com. TXT "mailcoach-verification=a873d3f3-0f4f-4a04-a085-d53f70708e84"

TXT "v=spf1 include:_spf.google.com ~all"

TXT "google-site-verification=TTrl7IWxuGQBEqbNAz17GKZzS-utrW7SCZbgdo5tkk0"

This is not just a phrase, it is a DNS entry. Using the most evil in phrases of digital sovereignty.

[1] https://info.addr.tools/enum.co

Re: Why Self-Host?

#59

Post by codegeek »

BinaryIgor wrote: post #54
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…

Exactly; but I would rather say that you don't need CDN unless you have tens of thousands of requests per second and your user base is global; single powerful machine can easily handle thousands and tens of thousands of requests per second

Agreed. I was being generous to the CDN lovers :). Peope don't know how powerful static file servers like Nginx and Caddy are. You don't need no CDN.

Re: Why Self-Host?

#60

Post by carlosjobim »

sksksk wrote: post #10

With self hosting email, if the digital sovreignty aspect is more important to you than the privacy aspect... What I do is use gmail with a custom domain, self host an email server, and use mbysnc[1] to always be downloading my emails from gmail. Then I connect to that email server for reading my emails, but still use gmail for sending. It also means that google can't lock me out of my emails, I still retain all my e…

The custom domain is all you need for complete e-mail sovereignty. As long as you have it, you can select between hundreds (thousands?) of providers, and take your business elsewhere at any time.
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