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I have a self-hosting page on this site, but it's out of date now. I thought I could write a bit here about what I'm hosting myself, and on what before I update it.
I have 2 domains… `trudgian.net` is for important things that I'm not hosting myself (yet) and mostly get left alone. The other `randomroad.net` domain is for my home / lab and self-hosted stuff.
On my primary `trudgian.net` domain I'm using
as a paid-for email provider, and my
website is just a redirect to this site, hosted on the SDF metarray service. Since family email is on this domain it won't end up 100% self-hosted. If I get hit by a bus tomorrow (or as soon as we are allowed out and about again), then I don't want my family to need to know about dealing with a self-hosted email setup!
On `randomroad.net` I'm now hosting more things, across more servers, than I was a couple of months ago. I previously slimmed down what I was using, but with the COVID lockdown I've had a bit more off-time around computers, and I've been more interested in getting things like self-hosted video chat working. I now host things out on the web using 2 small 1GB NetBSD VPS servers, and a 16GB budget Fedora dedicated server. This means the services aren't running on machines in my physical control but I manage them and I feel this still counts as 'self-hosting'.
This is a $5/month 1GB VPS in Dallas from
. I'm using Vultr as they allow you to install from an ISO easily, so it has
9.0 on it. This has my primary important services for the domain. I expect Vultr to be pretty reliable, and though it's a small VPS it's very quick to work on.
The server is running:
and
.
web server as a place for
as a simple/minimal web
.
This is another $5/month 1GB VPS from Vultr, but in Atlanta this time. It has NetBSD 9.0 again, and is running the secondary side of services:
and
.
Additionally I have a scheduled rsync to pull the important config from the first VPS, so that in the event of some disaster I can have the primary services running again quickly. I don't need real failover for this stuff as it's not that important.
offers rather oudated budget dedicated servers, but at ridiculously low prices. There are various classes of server offered in Canada and France, with minimum specs stated. If you buy one you will get the RAM and disk you pay for, but the CPU stated is a minimum. I have 16GB RAM, a 2TB HDD, and a quad core 3rd Gen i5 which is better than what I paid for.
I decided to get a Kimsufi server again (I've had one in the past) as:
Fedora is a slightly unusual choice for a server as it moves quickly, but I use it on my workstation so it's not much more work to keep this server up-to-date as well. I'm not using docker or containers, purely as I do that stuff all day for work and like a change, so it's convenient that Fedora provides more up-to-date packages than the very stable server distros.
This server is now running:
install. I switched back
, moved up from a
Kimsufi doesn't give full console access for installs, so I provisioned the OS on only a portion of the drive in the installation tool. This then allows the creation of a large LUKS2 encrypted data partition, where I can keep data so that it is encrypted at rest should the HDD die and be disposed of, or I end the contract. Potentially sensitive OS partition things such as web server logs etc. can be moved to this encrypted partition too. This is not the same as hosting your data at your own home, on a system you have physical control of, but it's sufficient for many purposes.
I use the excellent
software to pull daily backups down from the NetBSD and Fedora machines to my home machine. Borg works over SSH, setup to use key based authentication, and creates encrypted and de-duplicated backups. The machine the cron job runs on is set to wake on a schedule. It spends most of its time powered down to save a little bit of electricity at home. I only have some small arm boards always-on at home now.
I now have quite a bit more 'stuff' for self-hosting things than I was thinking of a couple of months ago, but it's enjoyable and has let me branch into additional things like self-hosting video chat. Going to definitely draw a line under it for the year. No more computers at home, or VMs and things out on the internet!
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This post is day 8 of my #100DaysToOffload challenge.
If you want to get involved, you can get more info from
.