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What I Self Host

fredrikmeyer.net

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Re: What I Self Host

#61

Post by pessimizer »

rpdillon wrote: post #10
teddyh wrote: post #4

I deplore this weakening and dilution of the term “self-hosting”. In my opinion, if your services had downtime today, you are not “self-hosting”. If you depend on anything which has “cloud” in its name, you are not “self-hosting”. If you cannot reasonably quickly access your hardware physically, like inserting or replacing an add-on card, you are not “self-hosting”. EDIT: It’s like saying “I don’t take the bus! I ‘se…

What do you call what the author is doing?

The same thing that somebody who clicked "install wordpress" in cPANEL did. They're installing software on a rented server hosted by a company that they rent from.

Re: What I Self Host

#62

Post by FabCH »

teddyh wrote: post #4

I deplore this weakening and dilution of the term “self-hosting”. In my opinion, if your services had downtime today, you are not “self-hosting”. If you depend on anything which has “cloud” in its name, you are not “self-hosting”. If you cannot reasonably quickly access your hardware physically, like inserting or replacing an add-on card, you are not “self-hosting”. EDIT: It’s like saying “I don’t take the bus! I ‘se…

There is a middle ground there. I self-host, was not at all affected today nor would I be if Google, MS, Cloudfare or any of the big ones go down. But I cannot easily access my server because it is locked in a datacenter 1000 km away.

But it is a bare metal server from Hetzner auction that I got for cheap and it now hosts an entire family&friends cloud for 10-ish people.

Re: What I Self Host

#63

Post by pessimizer »

teddyh wrote: post #4

I deplore this weakening and dilution of the term “self-hosting”. In my opinion, if your services had downtime today, you are not “self-hosting”. If you depend on anything which has “cloud” in its name, you are not “self-hosting”. If you cannot reasonably quickly access your hardware physically, like inserting or replacing an add-on card, you are not “self-hosting”. EDIT: It’s like saying “I don’t take the bus! I ‘se…

A host is someone who lets people stay in their house. "Self-hosting" and "bare-metal" have gotten debased in such a strange, commercial-marketing aligned way.

The new definition of "self-hosting" is that you play any part in a piece of software that you use (if I click the "install wordpress button in cPANEL, am I self-hosting?), and the new definition of "bare-metal" is "computer." It's just weird. How can you employ a webhost in order to self-host? How can it be bare-metal if it's hosted within an OS that completely abstracts the hardware?

I suspect non-technical people just wanted to fluff their qualifications, and the companies who host for them wanted to help.

Re: What I Self Host

#64

Post by teddyh »

tallanvor wrote: post #44
teddyh wrote: post #4

I deplore this weakening and dilution of the term “self-hosting”. In my opinion, if your services had downtime today, you are not “self-hosting”. If you depend on anything which has “cloud” in its name, you are not “self-hosting”. If you cannot reasonably quickly access your hardware physically, like inserting or replacing an add-on card, you are not “self-hosting”. EDIT: It’s like saying “I don’t take the bus! I ‘se…

If I self-host at home and my internet connection goes down so I can't access anything remotely, then I'm still SOL until I can get home. And millions of people are stuck with crappy upload speeds that make plenty of services that they may want to self-host nonviable if they care about being able to access it from anywhere. Yes, words have meaning, but most of us will happily disagree with your definition of self-hos…

What you describe is an unfortunate result of the terrible bandwith situation at your (and others’) location. It is not, however, a compelling argument to redefine a term to suit your liking.

(Also, with 4G, 5G, and satellite-based Internet, an alternate (albeit low-bandwith) route for emergency access is fairly straightforward to set up.)

Re: What I Self Host

#65

Post by teddyh »

QuantumNomad_ wrote: post #42
teddyh wrote: post #4

I deplore this weakening and dilution of the term “self-hosting”. In my opinion, if your services had downtime today, you are not “self-hosting”. If you depend on anything which has “cloud” in its name, you are not “self-hosting”. If you cannot reasonably quickly access your hardware physically, like inserting or replacing an add-on card, you are not “self-hosting”. EDIT: It’s like saying “I don’t take the bus! I ‘se…

I rent a couple of bare-metal servers from Hetzner, and I have physical servers at home. On my home hardware I keep things like multiple copies of my photos and documents, as well as experimenting a bit with open LLMs etc. On the rented servers, I host websites, PeerTube, Forgejo, and keep copies of some data I downloaded from elsewhere. I’ve also previously hosted email on rented servers. Both on rented hardware and…

> If someone decides that a particular service is neat to host on rented servers I won’t fault them for it.

Neither will I. It is an endeavor worthy of praise.

> And I consider things that you manage on your own to be self-hosted even if you don’t own the hardware it’s running on.

This is where I will disagree and stand fast. If you do not “host” it yourself, you are not “self-hosting”. You might be maintaining it. You might be administrating it. But you are not hosting it.

> You decided to rent a $5 VPS for your email? You’ll still learn things from that even if the server is not in your home.

I agree, and it is certainly something I wish that more people would attempt.

> And I will perfectly agree that it fits the name self-hosted email.

It may be said to be “self-administrated” or “self-maintained”. But it is not “self-hosted”.

Re: What I Self Host

#66

Post by pluto_modadic »

teddyh wrote: post #4

I deplore this weakening and dilution of the term “self-hosting”. In my opinion, if your services had downtime today, you are not “self-hosting”. If you depend on anything which has “cloud” in its name, you are not “self-hosting”. If you cannot reasonably quickly access your hardware physically, like inserting or replacing an add-on card, you are not “self-hosting”. EDIT: It’s like saying “I don’t take the bus! I ‘se…

self-hosting: running open source code that you could run on any computer.

if it's convenient to run mastodon on hetzner, that's STILL self hosting; because you /can/ move your app IN ITS ENTIRETY from any computer to any other.

HomeLab elites really are the most insufferable people out there.

Re: What I Self Host

#67

Post by AndyMcConachie »

teddyh wrote: post #4

I deplore this weakening and dilution of the term “self-hosting”. In my opinion, if your services had downtime today, you are not “self-hosting”. If you depend on anything which has “cloud” in its name, you are not “self-hosting”. If you cannot reasonably quickly access your hardware physically, like inserting or replacing an add-on card, you are not “self-hosting”. EDIT: It’s like saying “I don’t take the bus! I ‘se…

I rent VPS's in a data center and run services on them. I feel like I'm self-hosting. The days of me running a server in my own home are long gone. I don't want to deal with the power requirements, the noise, or the hardware.

I'm responsible for all the software that runs on them so I consider it self hosting.

Re: What I Self Host

#68

Post by pluto_modadic »

hunter2_ wrote: post #57
rpdillon wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't realize, but apparently this is a long-standing argument. I did just a tiny bit of digging because I'm sort of into self-hosting and I ran across the selfhosted Reddit's wiki on the topic. https://www.reddit.com/r/selfhosted/wiki/selfhosted TLDR: they don't differentiate on whether you own the hardware or not.

Basically it sounds like IaaS is fine (even though someone else manages the hardware and restricts OS choices), and even PaaS is fine (even though someone else manages the hardware, the OS, and the configuration of interpreters such as php / node.js / python / etc.), since these let you run your own code (which can include your instance of community code). Only SaaS would be excluded, as these don't let you run your…

IaaS VPS's and rented colo VMs are definitely fine. PaaS is... slightly not? it's the grey edge!

SaaS is definitely not you running stuff you control or could move anywhere.

If it's a buck standard linux box, yeah that's self hosting!

Re: What I Self Host

#69

Post by rpdillon »

pessimizer wrote: post #61
rpdillon wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you call what the author is doing?

The same thing that somebody who clicked "install wordpress" in cPANEL did. They're installing software on a rented server hosted by a company that they rent from.

It would also include the situation where there was a bare metal server you installed your own operating system on it and then wrote your own software and then deployed it to that server. The argument being made is that's not self-hosting. That makes me wonder what it should be called.

Re: What I Self Host

#70

Post by npodbielski »

ekjhgkejhgk wrote: post #53
zahlman wrote: post #2

There seems to be a fad for "self hosting" things now. What I don't understand is: what happened to just having a single device and having it run the code directly and show you the result directly? For example, why can't the thing that connects to the Spotify API just... do that, from a program that runs locally, independent of a web browser, with a GUI created using a standard non-web GUI toolkit? Why would I want t…

I think people don't know what they want, but they like fiddling with computers. So, they imagine future scenarios where they would have problems (which they don't) and imagine solutions for those problems they don't have, and spend time implementing those solutions. For example. Whenever RSS comes up, I say that newsboat is the best thing. People don't like it because it doesn't synchronize devices. Really? Why not…

Maybe for some. But for me I do not want giant corp own my data. Like I do give keys to my house to some company or I do not have people manage my own money. Just as a principle.
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