I want to get into self-hosting. I’ve done a bit of self-hosting before using a Raspberry Pi (pi-hole and Discord bots) but I really want to start self-hosting almost everything I can like I’ve seen many people here doing.
However, I’m not sure what kind of machine I should build which would be suitable for these purposes. I’ve never even built a PC before though my fiancee has and he will be able to help me…
Here are some services I’m thinking of self-hosting to start with:
- AdGuard
- OpenMediaVault
- Bitwarden
- Mastodon
- Matrix
Eventually I would also like to host PeerTube, Kbin, Plex, and many other things…
What are the most important things I’ll need to consider with a self-hosting machine, and what I will need to upgrade over time as I self-host more services? Ideally I’d like a machine which is as energy efficient as possible too.
Also, is it a good idea to host so many services, both publically-accessible websites as well as services only available on my home network, from the same machine? What are the security considerations when self-hosting?
Any links/articles for me to read would be appreciated too!
Yes, it’s a great idea. And I also do it myself. In fact, I’m not only self host all my services. I also host them at my home.
https://server.melroy.org including all the sub domains are all hosted on the same server.
You can just use a good ryzen computer with enough ram (start with 32 gb or something). With enough storage. Redundancy via raid. I personally use Proxmox with an Ubuntu 22.04 VM. However bare metal may be also fine.
Have fun!
What application did you use for the server page?
While https://melroy.org is using Jekyll https://gitlab.melroy.org/melroy/melroy-site. And my blog https://blog.melroy.org is using Hugo https://gitlab.melroy.org/melroy/melroy-blog
I’ll look at those, do you suggest selfhosting webpages over something like GitHub?
I do. I love to self host everything I can. I like to have control over my own data. I host my own GitLab instance. I host my own Nextcloud instance. Running Mastodon, Kbin, Matrix, you name it… All my DNS records point to my server IP.
ps. I’m also a contributor to kbin.
How do you feel about Cloudflare Zero Trust?
I don’t like that the whole world need Cloudflare to be honest. My vision of a free and open WWW should not include a big centralized corporation like Cloudflare. Instead of fixing the Internet and DDoS attacks, we just move all to Cloudflare?
Whether it’s zero trust or WAN, CDN or firewall solutions. I want everyone to be able to participate in the internet, to run their own infrastructure ideally without Cloudflare or cloud services in general. In fact, that is why I also try to create https://libreweb.org. The world needs a better internet, whatever that may look like.
I do want to move closer and closer to completely selfhosted for anything possible, but the knowledge required seems to never end, so I settle for things like Cloudflare Zero Trust to fill in the gaps.
yea it’s a shame… I don’t blame you. The current Internet has just became too complex. Too vulnerable. Too many attack vectors. You need to know about web-servers, various package managers, load balancing, firewalls, DNS, automated IP banning tools/DDoS protection, horizontal scaling, vertical scaling, Kubernet, Docker, security; updates, automated updates, various HTTP headers, TLS/SSL, various encryption configurations and versions, ciphers, you name it…
I actually doubt if Zero Trust is tackling all of the security aspects.