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Selfhosted tech starter pack for development of new project or startup

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Re: Selfhosted tech starter pack for development of new project or startup

#11

Post by frizzy »

dolni wrote: post #2

This looks cool as a learning experience and all, but... Self-hosting all your own stuff has to be the worst thing you can do as a new startup. You need to be focused on impactful work, not dealing with critical security updates to your Mattermost install. And definitely not worrying about figuring out how to properly HA databases and your self-hosted S3. Just use managed services.

Hey, autor here) I agree with you: when you only start, you should pay 100% attention to custdev and use as much ready to go cloud services as you can. Thats why I included "Free for Dev" link. However, I think that when you started development, especially with a team up to 10 people, or if you work with private information - you should hosting some of services and databases yourself. In my experience, at least private hosting of gitlab with CI&CD, databases and sometime monitoring system is a normal case. Also, startup is not always start from zero, sometime it's just a new project in a tech company. So this pack can help to start just a usual new project) And finally, this pack can be useful for developers who want to test new services locally. And I hope that it will be helpful for someone :)

Re: Selfhosted tech starter pack for development of new project or startup

#12

Post by dolni »

swipee wrote: post #7
dolni wrote: post #2

This looks cool as a learning experience and all, but... Self-hosting all your own stuff has to be the worst thing you can do as a new startup. You need to be focused on impactful work, not dealing with critical security updates to your Mattermost install. And definitely not worrying about figuring out how to properly HA databases and your self-hosted S3. Just use managed services.

So what should you focus on? What OSI layer is a good starting point? It depends on your skills right? I agree you should use as much established products as possible but you build your stack and create that unique differentiation on the market by also learning technology as you go. It all depends on where you land with your idea to the market. If you are selling knit figures online - you are right that you should no…

You should be focused on building a market for your product. What gives you a competitive advantage? I argue that self-hosting Mattermost doesn't help accomplish that vs. paying Slack.

You are right that there is a time and place to start taking more ownership of those basic pieces. Doing it before you even have something to sell is not the right time.

You have to survive as a small company before you can be a mid-size company.

Re: Selfhosted tech starter pack for development of new project or startup

#14

Post by toomuchtodo »

swipee wrote: post #7
dolni wrote: post #2

This looks cool as a learning experience and all, but... Self-hosting all your own stuff has to be the worst thing you can do as a new startup. You need to be focused on impactful work, not dealing with critical security updates to your Mattermost install. And definitely not worrying about figuring out how to properly HA databases and your self-hosted S3. Just use managed services.

So what should you focus on? What OSI layer is a good starting point? It depends on your skills right? I agree you should use as much established products as possible but you build your stack and create that unique differentiation on the market by also learning technology as you go. It all depends on where you land with your idea to the market. If you are selling knit figures online - you are right that you should no…

> So what should you focus on?

Revenue via leverage (managed services) once you have traction (people will pay you for what you're offering). Outsource everything except your core competencies, and optimize as throughput allows for either growth or cost reductions (judgement calls by competent practitioners close to the machinery). Broad strokes, as a startup you're attempting to grow revenue as fast as you can through value delivery to customers; you should be ruthlessly cutting anything you're spending your time on that doesn't contribute to that goal.

For sure, keep an eye towards your regulatory requirements, lock in risk (both vendor and technology), etc. That's not a call to self host everything, just what you absolutely can't grow or survive without (and in many cases, a product or service may come along down the road that allows you to refactor out of homegrown solutions). Organizational contributors who understand technology making these decisions de-risks suboptimal decisions being made.

(observations from experience at a hyper growth startup)

Re: Selfhosted tech starter pack for development of new project or startup

#15

Post by hatware »

I live in the United States, and it's kind of shocking to see such privileged responses to what is ultimately a useful starting stack.

Imagine a young engineer in Bogota, or Ukraine if you want to get topical. They may barely have the hardware to accomplish anything compute wise... and your answer is "Use AWS!" Access to the cloud is privilege to the highest degree. You used to need academic credentials to use someone else's computer.

I get the idea of not wasting time, but as somebody who has used self-hosting as nothing but a waste of time that teaches me something, I can't believe so few see the value in a self-hosted starter pack.

Great architecture, OP. I challenge you to simplify the process even more... A lot of manual steps here that should be abstracted with intuitive global configuration, IMO.

Re: Selfhosted tech starter pack for development of new project or startup

#17

Post by frizzy »

adlpz wrote: post #16

Question: Would this work on an ARM server? Or are the associated container images x86-only?

I didn't tested it on arm arch, so I think that you should check dockerhub for every image that you want to run - or just run it and see the result)

Re: Selfhosted tech starter pack for development of new project or startup

#19

Post by nonameiguess »

I think the early responses are a bit disheartening. There is a lot of value in "ancillary services in a box" for any project that has no choice but to self-host. This may not include a typical commercial startup, but it includes a lot of projects. It's especially big in defense. But, of course, the DoD already has its own version of this: https://repo1.dso.mil/platform-one/big-bang, including a managed version run by part of the Air Force if you don't need to roll your own but still have security requirements not met by commercial cloud providers.

Re: Selfhosted tech starter pack for development of new project or startup

#20

Post by frizzy »

ultra_nick wrote: post #3

Are there any managed services with hard cost limits? We're running or app on linode VPSs.

Maybe services with upfront payment... I saw only alert options in big clouds, but not a quotas. However, I admit that I don't know everything)
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