I’m just mildly curious. I know this isn’t the self hosting chan, but how many of you self host services as part of your efforts to retain your privacy, security, and anonymity?
I’ve been self hosting something for decades now. I got really started back in the PreNapster era. I ran an independent, selfhosted, fully licensed, internet radio outfit. That was back when music on the internet was a lot of cheap, tinny, geocities, midis. LOL I worked with a company called IM Radio Networks. They and Phillips, developed one of the world’s first bookshelf stereo, that was internet ready. Hook it up to the internet, and you could listen to AM/FM and IM radio. I’ve often mused that if it weren’t for Shawn Fanning, the music landscape on the internet might look a bit different as he forced the music industry to reevaluate how they did business.
Now, I self host a ton of stuff just for my own needs. It’s an enjoyable, purposeful, hobby, that keeps me busy. It’s also, so very educational, and I learn new things daily.
ETA: Man it does my heart good to meet and greet privacy minded users who also self host. It is an integral part of my privacy, anonymity, and security posture. If you aren’t already, or are thinking of self hosting, do it! You don’t need massive racks in the closet that dim the lights on reboot. A simple NUC or even RPi are quite capable of serving up services. You don’t need a Tier 1 feed from your ISP. Keep it simple and basic and work up from there to meet your needs.
Thanks again to all those who responded and shared their experiences.
I’m currently running 2 Proxmox hosts with 3 LXC containers and 3 VMs between them, and on my NAS - 2 VMs and… 50 docker containers.
I reeeeeally don’t like centralized services. 😂
I really love my Proxmox server. For a freemium product, it covers a lot of ground. Personally, I think it out performs VM Ware, and is very straight forward. I’m sure you’ve checked out the Helper Scripts? Lots of good stuff there.
I think I may have you bested. LOL Why not right? I mean, self hosting is a wide field and I can’t think of a lot that I need that I can’t self host. For a rather small entry fee, and some time, patience, and learning, it’s all achievable. I have never done a cost analysis but, if you were to add up all those subscription fees to all those centralized services, I think I am coming out on top. As long as you don’t try running enterprise grade, legacy stuff, and your equipment is relatively current, you’re golden.
100% agree with you re: Proxmox. I’ve recently migrated my gaming PC to a Proxmox setup with a Win10 gaming / VR VM, and a Debian 12 VM solely dedicated to serving, quantizing, and optimizing LLM (with full 3090FE vfio passthrough 😁). The other one I have is a super old mini-ITX tiny box with an i3-4130 in it, and I use it for a Plex LXC b/c my NAS has a CPU that doesn’t support hardware transcoding (even though I’ve literally showed all my clients how to disable transcoding completely so they all get direct streams / direct plays at original quality to their devices), just in case some transcoding needs to be done.
So I decided to set up the Cluster/Node bit a few days ago, and it is SO awesome to have instant access to both servers at one URL and interface to manage all my VMs/LXCs. I’ve only had one problem with Proxmox since I started using it a couple years ago, and I’ve loved everything else about it!
In the spirit of “why not right?”, here’s one of my favorite random services I run: https://github.com/jordan-dalby/ByteStash I love being able to save little snippets that I know in the moment I will hit myself later if I have to look it up again.
Oh you’re preaching to the choir. You ought to see the copious amounts of notes I take. Endless, detailed, step by step, EILI5 style. It’s not only nice to have, but it is quite essential. When I find something that works, I write that shit down and back it up.