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Why Self-Host?

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Re: Why Self-Host?

#61

Post by abdullahkhalids »

Pooge wrote: post #37
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.

All the popular domain name services and certificate issuers have APIs. All grandpa has to do is go online and buy a domain - which is a very reasonable step that grandpa can do. Grandpa, after all buys stuff online. But after that the self-hosted app should be able to leverage the APIs to configure all the settings.

Re: Why Self-Host?

#62

Post by npodbielski »

thayne wrote: post #20

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

I would not use nuc like this guy. Had one and it was slow and it have limited capacity.

Then I had my old PC and it was very good but I wanted more nvme disks and motherboard supported only 7.

Now I am migrating to threadripper which is a bit overkill but I will have ability to run 1 or two GPUs along with 23 nvme disks for example.

Re: Why Self-Host?

#63

Post by dlisboa »

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

Issue is network saturation. Most VPSs have limited bandwidth (1Gbps), even if their CPUs could serve tens of thousands of req/s.

Re: Why Self-Host?

#64

Post by throw-10-8 »

dizhn wrote: post #49
throw-10-8 wrote: post #19

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

Yes it's fine. Do you have any particular questions?

What does your usage look like? My use would be about 30 heavy daily users, another hundred sporadic. Mostly doc editing and video calls.

What kind of hosting infra are you using? Hetzner seems popular.

Any major recent security concerns, it seems to have a large attack surface.

Re: Why Self-Host?

#65

Post by jopsen »

fridder wrote: post #42

I do wonder if there is a market for a preinstalled self hosting computer or setup where the service would be automated backups, e2e encrypted of course, and perhaps high availability

Security updates.

And fixing things when they eventually break.

Honestly, there is a reason I still use a dreamhost shared plan. It's dirt cheap, been running forever, and I've never had to do the boring stuff.

And if they break my app, I can ask them to fix it.

If you deploy your app on a PaaS you still have to update everything inside the container.

Old school php hosting on a shared server does have some upsides - namely affordable support. (Sure, if I'm an extreme edge case support will not do much for me).

The same kind of thing for "self-hosting" would be cool.

Re: Why Self-Host?

#66

Post by aborsy »

throw-10-8 wrote: post #19

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

Look at AIO.

There are institutions with several thousands of employees that use Nextcloud, including mine.

I run an installation for our family, and it’s been problem free.

Re: Why Self-Host?

#67

Post by throw-10-8 »

pauleee wrote: post #31
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 lo…

Yeah I tested it out with the hetzner app on their smallest dedicated server and it ran fine.

Is storage share the managed service?

Re: Why Self-Host?

#68

Post by jimmaswell »

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.

What's so complicated? I'm currently on DigitalOcean but I've self-hosted before. My site is largely a basic LAMP setup with LetsEncrypt and a cron job to install security updates. Self-hosting that on one of my machines would only be a matter of buying a static IP and port forwarding.

Re: Why Self-Host?

#69

Post by EvanAnderson »

fridder wrote: post #42

I do wonder if there is a market for a preinstalled self hosting computer or setup where the service would be automated backups, e2e encrypted of course, and perhaps high availability

Synology and likely other NAS vendors are basically doing this. A buddy of mine isn't any kind of Linux sysadmin but he's running his whole home media management setup as Docker containers on a Synology NAS. I assume they have off-site backup services available, too.

Re: Why Self-Host?

#70

Post by throw-10-8 »

aborsy wrote: post #66
throw-10-8 wrote: post #19

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

Look at AIO. There are institutions with several thousands of employees that use Nextcloud, including mine. I run an installation for our family, and it’s been problem free.

Great, do you use their video conferencing (Talk?) at that scale?
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