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Screw it, I’ll host it myself

markozivanovic.com

211–220 of 495 posts

Re: Screw it, I’ll host it myself

#211
post #172

I'm doing something similar with a NUC that I colocated. $27/month for a gigabit port + 5 IPv4 addresses, and it's far more powerful than any VPS I could get for the same amount of money. It was a little bit of work to set it up initially, but now I maybe spend 30 minutes a month making sure things are updated. Hosting my own wiki, DNS over HTTPS server, Matomo analytics, and a few other random services.

I, too, would love to know where you're getting those colo costs. That seems too good to be true.

A reputable provider near me offers 1U with 100Mbps for $75/mo. That's with one power outlet, a second one costs another $35/mo. :(

Re: Screw it, I’ll host it myself

#212
post #172

I'm doing something similar with a NUC that I colocated. $27/month for a gigabit port + 5 IPv4 addresses, and it's far more powerful than any VPS I could get for the same amount of money. It was a little bit of work to set it up initially, but now I maybe spend 30 minutes a month making sure things are updated. Hosting my own wiki, DNS over HTTPS server, Matomo analytics, and a few other random services.

Wow, maybe my understanding of colocation costs is outdated...but $27/month sounds crazy inexpensive! May i ask @dervjd where/from which colo provider you are getting such costs???

EndOffice, out of Boston. Their website is somewhat of a mess, but they're legit. Been with them for 6+ months now with zero issues. I'll send you a message with details.

Re: Screw it, I’ll host it myself

#213

I think it's great that people are publishing their home server setups. At the same time, the scary sounding warnings of "You're at risk if you put your trust in another company to hold your data!!" ring really hollow to me. I mean, does this person keep all of his money under his mattress, or does he put it in a bank (though I guess he could keep it all in crypto...)? Does he buy insurance, or again just keep a moun…

Money and data are very different in this regard.

The systems that keep track of our money are (usually) very secure [0] and when they aren’t there is recourse to fix the damage. A thief can not use the stolen money if the transaction is reversed, but everyone on the planet can abuse your data once it is leaked.

[0] At least more secure than the systems those same companies use for their consumer data (see: Equifax).

Re: Screw it, I’ll host it myself

#214
post #65

I'm willing to bet you could run all these services on a single VPS. Having to manage 6 different hosts is going to be a pain in the ass, even if you use something like ansible. As far as backups, I don't understand why the author doesn't just encrypt them and send them to a cloud storage; it's what I'm doing personally with restic and it's not even expensive.

Same here, I host more than that on a single server at home for the family. Encrypted restic backups to Backblaze are so cheap, there's no reason not to do it.

Re: Screw it, I’ll host it myself

#215
post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well that is only if you look at software/ops as a 100% commercial undertaking. It is not. One way to understand why people self-host is to understand why people self-cook their food. It takes significantly longer to prepare food (get raw material, cut, cook) than ordering it. People still do it for $reasons - some find it fun, some find it cheaper, some find it nice to be able to control the taste, some find it more…

Far fewer people cook their own food for fun versus preparation time not being the only constraint: cost, availability, health, transparency (of prep & ingredients), dependency etc It's common for people to delude themselves into thinking they haven't wasted their time by convincing themselves they did it for fun (or the lols, or whatever) - I'd say the difference is whether they knew )or stated) this upfront, or onl…

Fair enough, by "far fewer" you basically mean the same thing I meant by "some". The point was not to have an exhaustive list of the exact reasons behind people cooking.

> It's common for people to delude themselves into thinking they haven't wasted their time by convincing themselves they did it for fun

I am probably missing some context here because this does not make sense to me. Something is fun because its fun, what does it even mean for someone to forcibly convince themselves of something that is otherwise? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

> Just attach a dollar-value to your free time

I do that when someone asks me to do a project for them in my free time, so I can know what to charge them. But there is little value in assigning a dollar-value for time that I am going to spend doing something that _I want to do_ . Its like watching a movie, or making a sand-castle in the backyard. I won't enjoy it if I keep thinking "Damn, I just watched a movie for 3 hours, there goes $300 worth of time."

Re: Screw it, I’ll host it myself

#216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This right here; but even more so. Eventually, whatever platform / tool you use will need to be upgraded. Security vulnerabilities, new features, etc happen and projects like these can get abandoned within a 5-year timeframe. When you have to migrate to either a new or upgraded platform, you have to figure it all out yourself. When the config is broken by an upstream dependency, you’re on the hook too. Who knows if t…

Long term platform stability seems to be moving from relying on the OS to higher up in the stack with the advent of Docker. It feels like Docker is being used more and more in cases where I would have considered something like CentOS.

Seems like there's a probably reasonable trend of piling some other tool on top of the stack because dealing with underlying layers is hard. Like electron apps and docker images. Or just web browsers.

Kind of worrisome to abandon lower layers with their problems and build on top of them, but what can you do, but get good at jenga.

Re: Screw it, I’ll host it myself

#217
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the diagram gives a skewed view of how hard this actually is. I run a very similar setup only my VPS is only a proxy for my home server and it requires very little maintenance. I run everything with docker-compose and I haven't had to work on my setup at all this year and only about 8 hours in 2020 to setup the Wireguard network to replace the ssh tunnels I was using previously for VPS -> server communication…

The technical language in this makes me ditto the first comment that this is too much for many people out there like myself

You are absolutely right, if you are not familiar with docker-compose, ssh tunnels, wireguard, etc... it will take more time to setup, that being said as far as maintenance go you will probably have a similar experience.

Most of my setup was done through SSH during boring classes in college so I had plenty of time to read documentation and figure out new tools.

Re: Screw it, I’ll host it myself

#218
Isn't $55 a bit high in total cost? Aside from the 2 servers for projects, all of those aren't going to need entire servers just for 1 user. I've run Nextcloud doing all the same stuff for half that price and don't think Gitea or Monica would add much overhead.

I'm aiming to do a lot of the same (and more) but definitely aiming at a much lower monthly cost.

Re: Screw it, I’ll host it myself

#219

Doing something very similar, hosting a lot of things on a Raspberry Pi 4 with 400 GB SD card. Dockerizing most things https://github.com/divyenduz/dev-infrastructure Not as easy though, I still need to figure backup strategy and everything. My goal is to eventually remove photos, and almost everything hosted entirely really.

I have a simple script that tars and gpg encrypts specific directories nightly. It’ll also reap backups in a sane way (only keep one per week for the last month, one per month for the last year, etc). And it’ll stop/start services/containers while backing up as needed. Then I distribute the backups to various devices using Syncthing.

I’ve been thinking about also having an off-site backup (for a house fire, electrical storm when everything is plugged in, etc), but that might be slightly paranoid.

Re: Screw it, I’ll host it myself

#220
post #54

The author treats his personal life as a job, with productivity tools and benchmarks. Whatever works for you, but I couldn't live like that.

For some of us, we turn it into a hobby. Only difference is that the technical knowledge and experience gained at work, can also be applied at home. (without a lot of restrictions).

What I meant is that I need some time to _not_ be productive. Like, actively not being productive. Literally wasting time for the sake of getting some peace of mind and true relaxation.

If your personal life is filled with productivity tools and optimizations, at what time in your daily life your are _not_ worried about productivity? If this time is zero, I think it's kind of sad and maybe even unhealthy. It's just my opinion, of course :)

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