Hey, I was thinking about getting a VPS and hosting my own single user Lemmy instance. I am trying to think of other things to host. I already have some old hardware running unRAID with Plex, the *arrs, Kavita and home assistant. This is pushing my hardware to the limit but I still want to mess around with some self hosted things. Is there anything you would rather host on a rented server as opposed to a server sitting at your home?

  • Ryan@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Right or wrong, the line I draw is “will I need to use this if I’m away from my home network?” If the answer’s “yes,” then I go with a VPS. I’m sure lots of people are angrily pounding their keyboard telling me to use Tailscale, but I have no interest in hacking/tweaking my home network’s infrastructure.

    • BetterNotBigger@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I’m not angrily typing this but I’m curious why not Cloudflare Zero Trust Tunneling? You get built-in authentication and don’t need to worry about dynamic ips. It’s pretty game changing for me as far as self-hosting goes. It also doesn’t require you to change your network infra as long as the host has some sort of connection to the Internet.

      • Ryan@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        This didn’t come to mind when I wrote my comment, but there’s also a “workflow friction” element. Most VPS providers have 1-click installs for the majority of the apps that I want/need to run, and I’m more of a developer than a sys admin. So I don’t really get anything out of figuring out how to do it, it just becomes another headache-inducing barrier to implement the stuff I need.

  • outcide@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    Services that need a lot of storage, I host at home (Gonic, Jellyfin, Audiobook Shelf etc). Services where I care about availability when I’m away from home, I host on a VPS (Vaultwarden, Synapse, Wordpress, DokuWiki etc).

  • Luca@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I use a VPS as a homelab gateway of sorts from the outside.

    Essentially, the VPS runs a Wireguard server that I connect to on my OPNSense Router. The VPS then reverse-proxies all incoming traffic through the tunnel to my homelab. All my DNS entries point to the VPS’s IP. This pretty much gives me a static IP, hides my real IP, and lets me do some light caching on the VPS. Kind of like a DIY cloudflare.

    I also run Uptime Kuma on the VPS, since it will continue to work if my local network is down.

    • MigratingtoLemmy@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Indeed, this is perfect. No need for something like Cloudflare proxying in this case.

      Which reverse-proxy do you use?

  • BetterNotBigger@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    With Cloudflare Zero Trust there is absolutely no reason for me to host on a VPS anymore. I have old hardware that’s all been revived and bootstrapped with cloudflare. If you have good Internet and decent upload IO why not start there especially if it’s just for yourself.

    • timespace@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Does Zero Trust allow you to run things on ports your ISP blocks, a la email/port 25?

      I run SimpleLogin on a VPS and if I can save $11/yr moving it home I’d definitely do it.

    • Dusty@l.dustybeer.com
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      1 year ago

      Just a heads up, things like Jellyfin are against their TOS if you aren’t paying for streaming with them.

    • Count Zero@lemmy.villa-straylight.social
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      1 year ago

      Because I don’t want to be centralized around a single company and service. Any company can provide a vps endpoint. I can literally be set up again in a manner of minutes on another ip, vps, or vps provider.

      • BetterNotBigger@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Out of all the battles for decentralization, the convenience Zero Trust provides is a trade-off I’m willing to make. I don’t see it being that much of an all-eggs-in-one-basket sort of deal since there’s no configuration done on any of my hosts. I simply install the tunnel with the token and that’s it. If there’s any reason I need to eject from Cloudflare I can simply pull the plug. Zero Trust feels more similar to relying on a nameserver with DNS management.

  • i_lost_my_bagel@seriously.iamincredibly.gay
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    1 year ago

    I have my monitoring software running on my VPS so that if my server goes down for whatever reason I can still look at what might’ve caused it to go down. I also have Authentik running on it because I need my authentication system running to be able to login to said monitoring software. Lastly I have Mastodon on my VPS because the internet at my parents house doesn’t have the upload bandwidth for it.

    I have all of this running on Oracle Cloud Free Tier. I don’t trust oracle in the slightest but I’m a broke college student so I take what I can get.

  • Eddie@l.lucitt.com
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    1 year ago

    I would say this: If it’s just you accessing your server and nobody else, self-hosting is fine.

    When it comes to giving other people access to your server, no matter how close of friends you may be, I would recommend renting a cheap VPS online. The security benefits are just that much better.

  • colonial@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Because my university’s network is cringe, I’m unfortunately forced to run everything on a VPS.

    This comes with a financial cost, and I have to carefully ration my computing power, but it does have some upsides - enough that I honestly prefer it now.

    • It keeps my desktop sealed away from the wilds of the open Internet. Obviously the risk isn’t that great, but since every service you run represents a potential security hole… it’s nice to have a “disposable” solution like a VPS.
    • I don’t have to worry about getting a static IP or using a service like Tailscale in order to talk to my services when away. All I have to do is point my Cloudflare DNS records at my VPS.
    • Better uptime. I used to host my blog on my desktop (!) which meant it would go down whenever I rebooted/lost connection/whatever. My VPS restarts once a month to apply updates and is always-on otherwise.