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Why Self-Host?

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Re: Why Self-Host?

#101

Post by FinnKuhn »

thayne wrote: post #76
therealfiona wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

And what if I don't have anything lying around?

Depends on what you want to do with it. To start any old free PC that you can find online is going to work for experimenting with it.

Re: Why Self-Host?

#103

Post by mikepurvis »

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…

The main thing that gives me anxiety about this is the security surface area associated with "managing" a whole OS— kernel, userland, all of it. Like did I get the firewall configured correctly, am I staying on top of the latest CVEs, etc.

For that reason alone I'd be tempted to do GHA workflow -> build container image and push to private registry -> trivial k8s config that deploys that container with the proper ports exposed.

Run that on someone else's managed k8s setup (or Talos if I'm self hosting) and it's basically exactly as easy as having done it on my own VM but this way I'm only responsible for my application and its interface.

Re: Why Self-Host?

#104

Post by trenchpilgrim »

prism56 wrote: post #96
trenchpilgrim wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I self host photos, but my backups are cloud hosted. A cold rarely accessed backup is way cheaper and more fungible across providers than an entire photos app.

Yeah that's fair enough. Valid approach, I went away from this due to getting family on my ente plan. I didn't want to be responsible/trusted with their images. This way the images are pretty well protected in ente's infrastructure and we can share in the same platform.

True, I only host my own photos, I don't want to possess anyone else's selfies or family photos for sure

Re: Why Self-Host?

#105

Post by FinnKuhn »

al_borland wrote: post #11
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…

We can’t have the word lose all meaning either. A cloud app that uses standard protocols and can be moved is still being run on a server you don’t own or control, by someone who could decide to change polices about data collection and privacy at any time. You can leave, but will you be able to migrate before the data is harvested? How would you ever know for sure?

The general definition (although it can be pretty loose) is that you need to control the computer/server your software is running on. If that is a VPS or a server in your basement really doesn't matter all that much in the end when talking about if something is self-hosted or not.

Re: Why Self-Host?

#106

Post by goodpoint »

dizhn wrote: post #46
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…

Self hosting involves 3 steps in my life. 1) Find the docker compose file. 2) Change the expose line to make it specific 10.0.10.1:9000 instead of the default 0.0.0.0:9000 . 3) Connect via wireguard. (Answers the "security" point a sister comment brought up too)

and goodbye security...

Re: Why Self-Host?

#107

Post by npodbielski »

tamimio wrote: post #39

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 stat…

You think civilisation will go down but you will still be able to chat with people via smartphone?

Re: Why Self-Host?

#108

Post by Sohcahtoa82 »

dlisboa wrote: post #63
BinaryIgor wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Even 1 Gbps is plenty to handle 1,000 connections unless you're serving up video.

That's 1 Mbps per user. If your web page can't render (ignoring image loading) within a couple seconds even on a connection that slow, you're doing something wrong. Maybe stop using 20 different trackers and shoving several megabytes of JavaScript to the user.

Re: Why Self-Host?

#109

Post by goodpoint »

neoromantique wrote: post #32
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.

100% wrong

Re: Why Self-Host?

#110

Post by jcon321 »

We self host everything at our company as we're a data center - all the tools required for a modern development stack + modern environments.

It's great for learning and control - it's not so great for anxiety.

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