A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.
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I've been working on expanding my homelab recently. I have a physical box at home serving as an LXC host along with a few VPSes. I'm now up to:
I think I read an old blog post once that said "Servers tend to multiply like rabbits" and it's 100% true.
Hi, I have an Unraid server (currently offline due to moving :'-/ ) running
VMs:
Docker containers:
The server was born when I merged my desktop PC, that was off and not utilized most of the time anyway, and my off the shelf NAS with 4 drives in raid5, that was slow, loud and could only run built-in garbage services. I ran Emby on Windows on my desktop, meaning I would have to manully turn it on every time I wanted to watch something.
Now my server runs on Ryzen 5 1600 with 48GB of RAM, GTX 1060 salvaged from a minig rig and total of 7 drives - 4 HDDs, 2 Sata SSD mirrored for cache and containers and 1 NVME SSD for VMs.
I've been selfhosting various things for almost 25 years now. Started with email/web, but now I've got the following (in no particular order):
Virtualization is mostly docker containers, but also some ESXi/VMWare Fusion. I also have Obsidian in the mix but that's not really a self-host but more of a way to organize/access my data. I have also been doing a (very!) little bit of experimentation with local LLMs, but it's all on ARM, using either the GPU or the NPU available on the RK3588.
This stuff either exists on an OVH VPS for the "internet facing" stuff or on an old Dell C6100 blade server. ESXi uses one blade and another blade runs Debian and talks to an old SATA/SAS disk shelf I got for $50 to see if I could make it work (it was super straightforward). I have a bunch of 2T and 4T "spinning rust" drives in two RAID6 arrays (mdadm) and then carve out storage for various things using LVM. I am experimenting with zfs on the VPS but am not a big fan of it. I used to run OpnSense on another blade since I couldn't find a router which would properly shape gigabit internet traffic, but now I'm using an ER605 and it seems to be doing quite well. I have a tiny KeepConnect device which will physically cut power to the cable modem if it can't see the internet which is very helpful since the biggest source of trouble for me has always been the damn internet service doing weird things when I'm not at home.
I've even been working toward "self hosting" my own educational electronics stuff for my kids using https://microblocks.fun/ (the actual project is called smallvm) - think scratch running completely in the browser and executing code on a "vm" which is actually running on a microcontroller over BLE or serial.
This sounds like a shitload of work and sometimes it can be, but one of the best parts of self hosting is that once it's set up, it hardly ever has to be updated/changed. Security updates are the biggest reason of course, but a LOT of this is not on the open internet so I can be more lenient about keeping things up to date. I also try to keep everything that needs a database to use ONE database (postgres), which also makes it easier to back up or use data from several tools in a new way. Honestly it's largely fire and forget these days. I add more space or replace drives as needed and try not to touch things otherwise. I keep a set of notes to help me remember not only the how but the WHY I set things up in a particular way, and those notes are accessible 100% offline. (After all, what good are notes on how things are set up if the thing you've stored them on isn't working?)
My infrastructure at home (C6100, SAS shelf, switch, etc.) consumes about 700W 24/7 which is not awesome but I figure the power bill saves a lot of service costs. The VPS runs me about $30/mo.
Hi
I started self hosting 3 years ago when I got wind of tailscale. I've always cared about privacy and building things so that was great.
My infrastructure consists of two machines.
One - my personal and work server A deskmini i3 12th gen
256GB Boot drive 4TB NVME data drive
-photoprism -syncthing -nextcloud -Firefox+VPN -archivebox
Two - my media server that I let 6ish other people access - PC tower i3 12th gen
512GB Boot and docker config file drive 4*4TB HDD mergerfs for raw data
-jellyfin -*arr suite -gluetun VPN -audiobookshelf (also for auto downloading podcasts) -calibre-web
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
| Fewer Letters | More Letters |
|---|---|
| DNS | Domain Name Service/System |
| ESXi | VMWare virtual machine hypervisor |
| IP | Internet Protocol |
| LXC | Linux Containers |
| NAS | Network-Attached Storage |
| NVR | Network Video Recorder (generally for CCTV) |
| PiHole | Network-wide ad-blocker (DNS sinkhole) |
| Plex | Brand of media server package |
| SSD | Solid State Drive mass storage |
| Unifi | Ubiquiti WiFi hardware brand |
| VPN | Virtual Private Network |
| VPS | Virtual Private Server (opposed to shared hosting) |
[Thread #292 for this sub, first seen 21st Nov 2023, 13:45] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]
Thank you for all for sharing π€© I still havent determine if I'm going self hosting at home or with a VPS, but I discovered cool projects!
Raspberry 4 No.1 (HassOS)
Raspberry 4 No.2 (Ubuntu LTS)
Fileserver custom built (Ubuntu LTS, local only):
Raspberry 4 No.3 (Raspian, local only)
All services dockerized but Kodi.
Original comment overwritten
I see people listing things I've never heard about...I thought I had spent a considerable amount of time on the old sub and knew stuff. Guess I gotta hit the books.
Right now though I'm hosting everything on a 2012 Mac Mini that's running Proxmox.
Been using these programs for awhile now:
Nothing crazy but cool stuff to learn in my day to day. I want more hardware but I'm about to buy a house. It's crazy how much I'm throwing at an 11 year old computer and it's handling it all quite well.
Pangolin!
3 Proxmox nodes 2 SFF Dell Optiplex (i5 with 32gb RAM) 1 Nuc (i7 with 64gb RAM)
1 Truenas host (old gaming PC i5 with 64gb RAM and 8TB ZFS pool
pfSense appliance for firewall
I use a combination of a MacMini Oracle cloud, probably not best long term solution but it's free (while it lasts).
Stuff that runs on Oracle:
Stuff on Mac:
Aside from that not much else π
I selfhost a lot of the normal stuff everyone else does. Plex, AdguardHome, etc...
I also have a 96+ port dial-up server system: https://2600.network
currently, I selfhost https://beyondcombustion.net and now https://lemmy.beyondcombustion.net for /r/vaporents and hopefully others. There's other stuff I self host too, this is the fun new stuff though.
I'm glad to see vaporents coming here. Is this an official migration or enthusiastic former redditors?
I turned my last two gaming PCs into Proxmox hosts and I have a Hetzner vps that will host something eventually.
2010 Gaming PC:
Pihole is running on a keepalived vip that acts as my secondary DNS server. Gravity sync keeps it in line with my main Pihole VM (push/pull) and then I have an old rpi also on the same keepalived vip that has gravity sync set up that pulls from the secondary VM
Anything I run as an evaluation or that needs testing also runs here. This machine gets Proxmox updates first as well.
2016 Gaming PC:
These are split amongst a few VMs depending on criticality and further broken down to needs (VPN, whether or not I can reboot and not affect my wife/kids, network share requirements.
I'm pretty much always tweaking something and having fun with it
Pi-hole, Wireguard + 'a CDN client' on raspberry pi 4 with SSD
Ditched my Synology NAS, running an unRaid machine now:
i5-10400, 32 GiB (to much) Memory, 15.7 TB used of 60 TB
Running xen hypervisor (Debian 12) on a HP Elitedesk 805 Gen6 (currently 10 VMs) at home, a few VPS from different hosting providers too.