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Why Self-Host?

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Re: Why Self-Host?

#181

Post by udev4096 »

nicce wrote: post #128
import wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I have been trying to move from proxmox + arch VMs to incus + nixos VMs. Really love the idea of functional programs as a config but the upfront cost of getting familiar with it is quite high but seems to be worth it

Re: Why Self-Host?

#182

Post by throwzasdf »

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…

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Re: Why Self-Host?

#183

Post by czhu12 »

gregsadetsky wrote: post #147
czhu12 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'm also in this space - https://disco.cloud/ - similarly to you, we offer an open source alternative to Heroku. As you well know, there are a lot of players and options (which is great!), including DHH's Kamal, Flightcontrol, SST, and others. Some are k8s based - Porter and Northflank, yours. Others, not. Two discussion points: one, I think it's completely fair for an indie hacker, or a small startup (Heroku's and o…

Yeah so happy to share how that happened to us.

If you want to host a redshift instance, and get Google Analytics logs + twilio logs + stripe payments + your application database into a datawarehouse, then graph all that in a centralized place (tableau / looker / etc)

A common way to do that is:

- Fivetran for data streaming

- Redshift for data warehousing

- Looker for dashboarding

You're looking at $150k / year easily.

Re: Why Self-Host?

#184

Post by 6ak74rfy »

I too care a lot about privacy and data sovereignty but those aren't sufficient arguments to self-host. For instance, my wife cares about the two too and so she uses most of the services that I host at my home, but she isn't going to start self-hosting herself anytime soon.

I think the missing piece is you need to enjoy the process itself - without that, it's not really tenable (at least today).

Re: Why Self-Host?

#185

Post by throwzasdf »

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…

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Re: Why Self-Host?

#186

Post by octo888 »

[warning: old man rants at clouds]

Maybe I'm getting old, but I think at this stage I want the third, often-unspoken route: no data.

Let go of things

No need for infrastructure when you have nothing to host. And data that doesn't exist is the most secure in the world.

Is my home a home – or the premises of a small-business? Racks, servers, cables, smart devices, the fan noise etc!

It does feel like we are operating our lives more and more like a small business these days: managing data, managing logins, "B2B" with hundreds of companies (EULAs, contracts, invoices, subscriptions...), files, archives, backups, contacts, appointments, app after app after app...on and on.

I wish life were simpler. Maybe a lot is in our control, more than we realise

Re: Why Self-Host?

#187

Post by benou »

mrsilencedogood wrote: post #160
auspiv wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Email is the one notable exception for self hosting. I self host everything, but let email be handled by 3rd parties.

Yeah I really will give people a pass here. The state of email is one of the worst collective mistakes I think we've made. You can literally be an expert in everything relevant - and your mail will still not get delivered just because you're not google/mailgun/etc. I was trying to do a very simple email-to-self use-case. I was sending mail from my VPS (residential IP not even allowed at all) which was an IPv4 i'd had…

I'm self-hosting for 17 years and counting.

In my opinion, the pragmatic solution I use is:

1) use a specialized distribution (I use yunohost but there are others). This makes configuring SPF, DKIM, TLS and more a breeze

2) use a reputable relay to send your emails (I use OVH but again there are plenty of other choices)

Of course it means you are not "pure" because emails you send will go trough a 3rd party (the relay) but it solved the delivery issue entirely for me, so that I can continue to benefit from all the other benefits of self-hosting.

Re: Why Self-Host?

#188

Post by eddieroger »

chrisweekly wrote: post #168
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…

Mostly agreed, and thanks for sharing your POV. One slight disagreement: "No need for CDN etc unless you are talking about millions of requests per day." A CDN isn't just for scale (offloading requests to origin), it's also for user-perceived latency. Speed is arguably the most important feature. Yes, beware premature optimization... but IMHO delivering static assets from the edge, close as possible to the user, is b…

You're right, including your warning of premature optimization, but if the premise of the thread is starting from a VPS, user-perceived latency shouldn't be as wild as self-hosting in a basement or something because odds are your VPS is on a beefy host with big links and good peering anyway. If anything, I'd use the CDN as one more layer between me and the world, but the premise also presupposed a well-hardened server. Personally, the db and web host being together gave me itches, but all things secure and equal, it's a small risk.

Re: Why Self-Host?

#189

Post by ziml77 »

FinnKuhn wrote: post #105
al_borland wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Why doesn't it matter? A VPS is still someone else's computer. They could be monitoring what you're doing on there because they run the hypervisor and they have physical access.

Re: Why Self-Host?

#190

Post by j23n »

I've stepped back from self-hosting after realizing that 90% of my use case was to keep calendar/contacts/files/photos/passwords in sync between my laptop and phone.

I'm now experimenting with a files-based approach, using syncthing for the p2p syncing, and it works really well.

No VPS or home server to setup and maintain, no security worries, no database migrations, no extra backups, no tinkering with Caddy configs.

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