Not exactly self hosting but maintaining/backing it up is hard for me. So many “what if”s are coming to my mind. Like what if DB gets corrupted? What if the device breaks? If on cloud provider, what if they decide to remove the server?
I need a local server and a remote one that are synced to confidentially self-host things and setting this up is a hassle I don’t want to take.
So my question is how safe is your setup? Are you still enthusiastic with it?
My incredible hatred and rage for not understanding things powers me on the cycle of trying and failing hundreds of times till I figure it out. Then I screw it all up somehow and the cycle begins again.
All of your issues can be solved by a backup. My host went out of business. I set up a new server, pulled my backups, and was up and running in less than an hour.
I’d recommend docker compose. Each service gets its own folder inside your docker folder. All volumes are a folder in the services folder. Each night, run a script that stops all of them, starts duplicati, backs up to a remote server or webdav share or whatever, and then starts them back up again. If you want to be extra safe, back up to two locations. It’s not that complicated if it’s just your own services.
Right now I just play with things at a level that I don’t care if they pop out of existence tomorrow.
If you want to be truly safe (at an individual level, not an institutional level where there’s someone with an interest in fucking your stuff up), you need to make sure things are recoverable unless 3 completely separate things go wrong at the same time (an outage at a remote data centre, your server fails and your local backup fails). Very unlikely for all 3 to happen simultaneously, but 1 is likely to fail and 2 is forseeable, so you can fix it before the 3rd also fails.
Exactly right there with the not worrying. Getting started can be brutal. I always recommend people start without worrying about it, be okay with the idea that you’re going to lose everything.
When you start really understanding how the tech works, then start playing with backups and how to recover. By that time you’ve probably set up enough that you are ready for a solution that doesn’t require setting everything up again. When you’re starting though? Getting it up and running is enough
Gonna just stream of consciousness some stuff here:
Been thinking lately, especially as I have been self-hosting more, how much work is just managing data on disk.
Which disk? Where does it live? How does the data transit from here to there? Why isn’t the data moving properly?
I am not sure what this means, but it makes me feel like we are missing some important ideas around data management at personal scale.
I have a rack in my garage.
My advice, keep it simple, keep it virtual.
I dumpster dove for hardware and run proxmox on hosts. Not even clustered, just simple stand alone proxmox hosts. Connect to my Synology storage device and done.
I run next cloud for webDav contacts and calendar (fuck Google), it does photo and do. Storage. The next client is free from F-Droid for Android and works on debian desktops like a charm.
I run Minecraft server
I run home automation server
I run a media server.
Proxmox backs everything up on schedule
All I need to do is get off-site backup setup for Synology important data and I’m all set.
It’s really not as hard as you think if you keep it simple
Others have said this, but it’s always a work in progress.
What started out as just a spare optiplex desktop and needing a dedicated box for Minecraft and valheim servers, to now having a rack in my living room with a few key things I and others rely on. You definitely aren’t alone XD
Regular, proactive work goes a long way. I also stated creating tickets for myself, each with a specific task. This way I could break things down, have reminders of what still needs attention, and track progress.
Do you host your ticketing system? I’d like to try one out. My TODO markings in my notes app don’t end up organized enough to be helpful. My experience is with JIRA, which I despise with every fiber of my being.
I have set up forgejo, which is a fork of gitea. It’s a git forge, but its ticketing system is quite good.
