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Why Self-Host?
121–130 of 269 posts
Re: Why Self-Host?
#12220 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…
Fully agreed that any rough edges/onboarding can be solved (with a lot of work, care, etc.). I just have one main question: what would you like to self-host? Limewire was about file sharing, so the "value proposition" was clearly-ish defined. The "what does Limewire do" was clear. Are you interested in hosting your own web site? Or email? Or google cal/drive/photos-equivalent? Some of it, all of it? I'm genuinely cur…
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Re: Why Self-Host?
#123I build myself a fedora coreos based nextcloud instance with encrypted backup to S3:
https://github.com/jeppester/coreos-nextcloud
In short you fill in the env-files, then run butane and ignition. (I should improve the README some time)
I love how it's all configuration. If it breaks I can set up another instance with the same secrets in minutes. It will then grab the latest backup and continue like nothing happened.
Re: Why Self-Host?
#124"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 port…
You can mitigate a lot of security issues by not exposing your self-hosted stack to the Internet directly. Instead you can use a VPN to your home network.
An alternative is a front-end proxy on a box with a managed OS, like OpenWRT.
Re: Why Self-Host?
#125"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…
This is why I built https://canine.sh -- to make installing all that stuff a single step. I was the cofounder of a small SaaS that was blowing >$500k / year on our cloud stack Within the first few weeks, you'll realize you also need sentry, otherwise, errors in production just become digging through logs. Thats a +$40 / m cloud service. Then you'll want something like datadog because someone is reporting somewhere th…
Yeah, you are very right.
If you start peaking success, you realize that while your happy path may work for 70% of real cases, it's not really optimal to convert for most of them. Sentry helps a lot, you see session replay, you get excited.
You realize you can A/B test... but you need a tool for that...
Problem: Things like Openreplay will just crash and not restart themselves, with multiple container setups, some random part going down will just stop your session collection, without you noticing.. try to debug that? Goodluck, it'll take at least half a day. And often, you restore functionality, only to have another random error take it down a couple of months later, or you realize, the default configuration is only to keep 500mb of logs/recordings (what), etc, etc...
You realize you are saving $40/month for a very big hassle and worse, it may not work when you need it. You go back to sentry etc..
Does Canine change that?
Re: Why Self-Host?
#126Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
The thread is about self-hosted CDN capabilities. Serving large images and video is what CDNs are for. I’m just talking technical limitations here, chill a little bit with the “your web page”.
Re: Why Self-Host?
#127Self hosting is great and I'm thankful for all the many ways to run apps on your own infra. The problem is backup and upgrades. I self host a lot of resources, but none I would depend on for critical data or for others to rely on. If I don't have an easy path to restore/upgrade the app, I'm not going to depend on it. For most of the apps out there, backup/restore steps are minimal or non existent (compared to the one…
What kind of backup solution are you expecting?
Every selfhosted app runs in docker, where the backup solution is back up the folders you mounted and the docker-compose.yml. To restore, put the folders back and run docker compose up again. I don't need every app to implement its own thing, that would be a waste of developer time.
Re: Why Self-Host?
#128Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Not the OP. I assume everything running in docker. For containers: Upgrading new versions can be done headless by watchtower or manually. For the host: You can run package updates regularly or enable unattended upgrades. Backups can be easily done with cron + rclone. It is not a magic. I personally run everything inside docker. Less things to concern.
nixOS is great as host. If updates break something, either update does not go through or you just rollback to previous version. And all configuration in a single file.
Re: Why Self-Host?
#129Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
LAMP with dynamic webpages (I assume your approach) works just like it ever did (besides SSL)
But are you really keen to make a PHP dynamic webpage application where each page imports some database function/credentials and uses them to render html?
Can you keep the behavior of fluent userflow (e.g. menu not rerendering) that way? Only with minimal design.
When in 2006 most webpages had an iframe from the main content, an iframe for the menu, and maybe an iframe for some other element (e.g. a chat window), it was fine to refresh one of those or have a link in one load another dynamic page. Today that is not seen to be very attractive and to common people (consumers and businesses), unattractive means low-trust which means less income. Just my experience, unfortunately. I also loved that era in hindsight, even though the bugs were frustrating, let alone the JS binding and undefined errors if you added that...
Re: Why Self-Host?
#13020 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.
That's ok, because "self-hosting" is not a goal in itself, it's a means to an end