Tbf, it CAN be pretty cheap, depending on where you live (or what you got available at home), all things considered. Might even save you some money in the long run from not having to pay subscriptions.
I have a cluster of $100 Lenovo mini PCs that I’ve been using for 5 years now. The hobby doesn’t have to be expensive.
Until you get to storage. I’ll admit, I dropped $4500 on VM and Media storage a few years back. But that should still last me a few more years before that fills up!
Sadly for me, my region is terrible for buying any kind of tech, so its been quite expensive. Still better than most hobbies however! Storage really hurts tho yeah, its never enough (never enough RAM either).
Smart. One tip is if it is really old and can’t do AV1 hardware transcoding make sure to set it up so it downloads HEVC or H.264 only. I also started selfhosting this year and one thing I wish I knew from the start is about https://github.com/getarcaneapp/arcane , makes it much easier to spin up new docker containers or update them.
To be fair, I’m a complete noob and don’t know if what I have is too weak or overkill. I just figured that it’s a 12 year old computer and might be worse than what others are using.
The other day I was looking at a guy who made a “cheap build!” for his homelab, to play with around AI models. The guy had 4 (FOUR!) 4090s with a 2kW+ PSU in some run of the mill case.
I have a 1Gb Pi 4B that hosts my critical network infrastructure (DHCP, DNS, cloudflared), a 20 year old laptop that I brought back to life with an SSD and some cheap RAM for mostly everything else, and the only thing I splurged a bit was a NAS with 2 drives for proper RAID, for the family photos and docs.
But I started with the cheap Pi, and built up from there. Don’t start from the top :)
Ah sorry, putting the carriage ahead of the horses here. I think that pc will be really good to get a taste of the hobby but if you do decide to stick with it you might wanna switch to something less power hungry (since servers are on 24/7). Anyhow, the selfhosted community can be helpful but often they assume you know a lot of things so feel free to dm me if you have questions, I’ve gone through all the beginner hustles just recently
Tbf, it CAN be pretty cheap, depending on where you live (or what you got available at home), all things considered. Might even save you some money in the long run from not having to pay subscriptions.
I have a cluster of $100 Lenovo mini PCs that I’ve been using for 5 years now. The hobby doesn’t have to be expensive.
Until you get to storage. I’ll admit, I dropped $4500 on VM and Media storage a few years back. But that should still last me a few more years before that fills up!
“Should” is doing some serious work in your last statement.
As someone with ~72 TB of raw storage… Heh. Good luck.
12 TB raw SSD and 200 TB of raw spinning rust. :D
Sadly for me, my region is terrible for buying any kind of tech, so its been quite expensive. Still better than most hobbies however! Storage really hurts tho yeah, its never enough (never enough RAM either).
My plan is to start by turning an old PC into a Jellyfin server, just to see how everything works. Then later I might buy dedicated hardware.
Smart. One tip is if it is really old and can’t do AV1 hardware transcoding make sure to set it up so it downloads HEVC or H.264 only. I also started selfhosting this year and one thing I wish I knew from the start is about https://github.com/getarcaneapp/arcane , makes it much easier to spin up new docker containers or update them.
I’m not sure what this means yet, but I’ll try to remember when it comes up, thanks. The PC I plan on using is fairly old - a 2013 build with a 770.
For a Jellyfin server.
Uses the same card as my current gaming rig…
Aww jeez. I am but a peasant in a lord’s world.
To be fair, I’m a complete noob and don’t know if what I have is too weak or overkill. I just figured that it’s a 12 year old computer and might be worse than what others are using.
The other day I was looking at a guy who made a “cheap build!” for his homelab, to play with around AI models. The guy had 4 (FOUR!) 4090s with a 2kW+ PSU in some run of the mill case.
I have a 1Gb Pi 4B that hosts my critical network infrastructure (DHCP, DNS, cloudflared), a 20 year old laptop that I brought back to life with an SSD and some cheap RAM for mostly everything else, and the only thing I splurged a bit was a NAS with 2 drives for proper RAID, for the family photos and docs.
But I started with the cheap Pi, and built up from there. Don’t start from the top :)
This is good to hear. I also have a cheap Pi that I’m not currently using for anything. Maybe I should figure out a job for it too.
Ah sorry, putting the carriage ahead of the horses here. I think that pc will be really good to get a taste of the hobby but if you do decide to stick with it you might wanna switch to something less power hungry (since servers are on 24/7). Anyhow, the selfhosted community can be helpful but often they assume you know a lot of things so feel free to dm me if you have questions, I’ve gone through all the beginner hustles just recently
Will do, thanks! I haven’t even thought about the power consumption yet. Hmm… maybe I’ll do some math once a power bill comes back to bite me.
Wait what’s arcane? Like portainer, but good?
Like Dockge but can update images, has OIDC and a bunch of other features