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Screw it, I’ll host it myself

markozivanovic.com

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Re: Screw it, I’ll host it myself

#331

Post by poisonborz »

FunnyLookinHat wrote: post #4

The diagram alone is more than enough of an argument to dissuade me from giving this a shot right now - it's simply too complicated and too much to manage for the amount of time I can dedicate to it. BUT - I'm really thankful for people who keep posting and sharing these sorts of projects; they're the ones iterating the process for the rest of us who need something a bit more turn-key. I'm excited to see this eventua…

Depends on what you want - for file sync, there is definitely similar things there. As for generic homelab, I'm writing a similar article atm, and I can tell you, it will be maybe simpler to follow, but definitely not less complex. Everything depends on your needs. What's important here that ideally you only need to do this once, and then only do light maintenance.

Re: Screw it, I’ll host it myself

#332

Post by markozivanovic »

ajcp wrote: post #328
markozivanovic wrote: post #312

Hi, I'm the author, Thank you all so much for your comments. I didn't expect this will be this high on HN. I'm aware there are more simple solutions for self-hosting, even partially. I'm also aware that my setup is not perfect - that's why this post was created. I was hoping to get some feedback. Not from that many of you, but some friends. :) Ask me anything you like, I'll try to answer every question.

I really enjoyed the read, thank you! You're system architecture is very clean and understandable. I spend a lot of time marveling at the beautiful but often overly complex diagrams on r/homelabs, which more often than not dissuade me from actually having a go at it. Your explanation made it feel very approachable. That being said... > Some people think I’m weird because I’m using a personal CRM. This strikes me as i…

Heh, I'm living and working in Germany, but I'm not German, still (or yet). :)

Regarding CRM and Contacts - I could possibly fit all the info in the 'about' field for a particular contact, but Monica offers me so much more. With Monica, I can structure the data for a contact in a better way. That 'better way' and the feature set of Monica is why I'm using it.

Re: Screw it, I’ll host it myself

#333

Post by cinericius »

haolez wrote: post #220
nirav72 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 m…

I agree with you on the importance of non-productive time but I've found having my own infrastructure makes my life smoother day to day in exchange for some upfront cost. It's a tricky balance, and as many other commenters have mentioned that initial cost can end up not being so initial - though I think most people who engage in this 'hobby' generally find both the process and the product rewarding.

Re: Screw it, I’ll host it myself

#334

Post by gjs278 »

dr-smooth wrote: post #189

The problem I have always had when building elaborate home server setups is the "set it and forget it" nature of the systems I've installed bites me in the ass. Since it's not my full-time job to manage these systems, I'm really not familiar with them the way I might be with the systems I manage at work. These systems cruise along for years, and when something finally does go belly-up, I can't remember how I set it u…

umm that is probably the worst possible setup you can have. docker may not even exist in 8 years. all your images will be insecure and out of date. you should be setup on a rolling release distro.

Re: Screw it, I’ll host it myself

#335

Post by clairity »

deckard1 wrote: post #329
clairity wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the average person doesn't even know what these things are, which is partially why there is a market opportunity here. what they know is that companies like google and facebook are not entirely trustworthy but they have no alternative. it's hopelss, until an entity comes along and gives them some hope in the form of an alternative. basically all of the things we talk about around preserving privacy and security on th…

You're getting into Ken Thompson's "Trusting Trust" territory here. When you lose trust you end up with your crazy uncle leaving Fox News for Alex Jones and YouTube. You have people becoming QAnon followers. I say this not to make a political point, but that the problem is fundamentally hopeless and I see no way out. You end up landing on one side of the fence or the other. You either just don't think about it and co…

while i agree google and facebook have certainly peed in the pool, that strikes me as overly cynical, simply through recognizing that only a fringe few actually radicalize or become helplessly paranoid in that way in practice.

most people, whether they rationalize it or not, are cognizant that we live in the grey gradient of trust for various companies and brands. the vector field is all sorts of wacky and inscrutible, but maybe we can point a few of those vectors in the right direction and some folks will happily slide down it to better (but perhaps not perfect) safety and privacy.

Re: Screw it, I’ll host it myself

#336

Post by kelnos »

vinceguidry wrote: post #290
coldtea wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now you have N problems... What happens when those images are not available, terraform/packer change APIs, etc?

My solution is Kubernetes. Everything's configured in YAML files. The solution to all those problems is... change fields in YAML files. Of course, you need to figure out what you need to change and why, but you'll never not need to do this, if you're rolling your own infra. K8s allows you to roll a lot more of the contextual stuff into the system.

Do you find there to be a good amount of overhead in running your own Kubernetes cluster? I'd think initial setup would be a bit of work, and then keeping the cluster updated and patched would be a good amount of work as well.

Then you've just traded maintaining one system for maintaining another.

Re: Screw it, I’ll host it myself

#338

Post by random5634 »

I use AWS - the customer service seems great - I've personally received good service, the support life times are amazing (I used Simple DB).

These articles with "I wouldn't use AWS I'll leave it at that.." - be more specific!

For personal stuff ECS / fargate works well in my use cases. I put together a little docker and away I go - I pay for one reserved instance which saves money - fargate for stuff that is occasional or bursts (when I started fargate pricing was too high).

Docker is in some ways self documenting - I also have a home server setup complete with router etc - but someone is going to bump something at home and the reconfig / resetup time is much longer than with AWS.

Re: Screw it, I’ll host it myself

#339

Post by skynet-9000 »

trulyme wrote: post #239
j1elo wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh and don't forget that now maybe you make everything work, but in two years time your setup won't be reproducible, because chances are the original images are not available any more, they got deleted from Docker Hub some months after you used them. Yeah, you should update them anyway for security... but the setup itself is not reproducible, and being forced to use the latest version of something, with the new idios…

Maybe, but when the original docker image is no longer available on docker hub, chances are there will be something better and even easier to setup. And with docker you don't care about installing / uninstalling apps and figuring out where that obscure setting was hidden - all you need is just a stock distro and a bunch of docker-compose.yml files, plus some mounted directories with the actual data.

But a lot of those unofficial docker images are of unknown quality and could easily contain trojans. It's completely different from installing a package from your distro.

Re: Screw it, I’ll host it myself

#340

Post by Daho0n »

1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #294
dr-smooth wrote: post #189

The problem I have always had when building elaborate home server setups is the "set it and forget it" nature of the systems I've installed bites me in the ass. Since it's not my full-time job to manage these systems, I'm really not familiar with them the way I might be with the systems I manage at work. These systems cruise along for years, and when something finally does go belly-up, I can't remember how I set it u…

The author focuses the entire blog post on remote third party services that are alternatives to popular third party services financed by data collection as a "business model". IMO, the single most important component of a home network is not any piece of the hardware/software outside the home that the third parties may control, it is the internet gateway in the home. Routers were the most important computers at the d…

Sadly many who want to control the gateway with something safe and open fall in the trap that is pfsense.
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