I saw this post today on Reddit and was curious to see if views are similar here as they are there.
- What are the best benefits of self-hosting?
- What do you wish you would have known as a beginner starting out?
- What resources do you know of to help a non-computer-scientist/engineer get started in self-hosting?
To piggy back on your “You don’t need k8s or high availability”,
If you want to optimize your setup in a way that’s actually beneficial on the small, self hosted scale, then what you should aim for is reproducibility. Docker compose, Ansible, NixOS, whatever your pleasure. The ability to quickly take your entire environment from one box and move it to another, either because you’re switching cloud providers or got a nicer hardware box from a garage sale.
When Linode was acquired by Akamai and subsequently renamed, I moved all my cloud containers to Vultr by rsyncing the folder structure to the new VM over SSH, then running the compose file on the new server. The entire migration short of changing DNS records took like 5 minutes of hands-on time.
Ansible is so simple yet so elegant.
I just moved everything from vultr to self host because of their latest changes.
EDIT: As I suspected, the changes that u/mesamunefire is referencing are the ones that taken out of context awhile back and incorrectly assumed to apply to user VPS’ and the data on them, which is not the case. Those terms only apply to information posted publicly to their website, like the community forums.
What changes would those be
Can’t speak for OP, but I bailed on Vultr because of how they handled the arbitration agreement change. Basically, I couldn’t access my containers without accepting the new TOS, so I “hacked” the website with Inspect Element so I could access support to close my account. For me, the arbitration change wasn’t the issue (my current host has similar policies), but being forced to accept a new TOS to use my account. I had no option do disagree or “remind me later,” I literally only had an “accept” button. I refuse to use any service that treats me like that.
I’m now with Hetzner, so we’ll see if they pull that nonsense. I only use the VPS to get around my ISP’s CGNAT (WireGuard VPN w/ HAProxy at the edge to route domains), so if they pull the same nonsense, I’ll copy my config to another VPS.
https://old.reddit.com/r/webdev/comments/1boz5ne/vultr_new_tos_claims_all_commercial_rights_to/ " You hereby grant to Vultr a non-exclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, royalty-free, fully paid-up, worldwide license (including the right to sublicense through multiple tiers) to use, reproduce, process, adapt, publicly perform, publicly display, modify, prepare derivative works, publish, transmit and distribute each of your User Content, or any portion thereof, in any form, medium or distribution method now known or hereafter existing, known or developed, and otherwise use and commercialize the User Content in any way that Vultr deems appropriate, without any further consent, notice and/or compensation to you or to any third parties, for purposes of providing the Services to you."
And you could not opt out. You had to click agree in order to login. That’s the biggest one.
It was later removed after the fact but there were other changes that sucked.
That only applies to posts on their forums. Not the content on your VPS
Nope. It’s the content.
Incorrect. It applies only to the forums. It does not apply in any way, shape, or form to your VPS or the content on it. It’s one thing to be mistaken, but let’s not spread misinformation on purpose.
It appears after the controversy they removed the parts https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/03/after-overreaching-tos-angers-users-cloud-provider-vultr-backs-off/
But when I read the tos, it was pretty clear it was not limited.
You also had to agree without an opt out which was scammy. There are better providers out there.
Not needing Kubernetes is a broad statement. It allows for better management of storage and literally gives you a configurable reverse-proxy configured with YAML if you know what you’re doing.
Yes, but you don’t need Kubernetes from the start.
Well I guess podman works fine for the first few months. Interestingly I still use build-ah heavily for building my custom images
I find a lot of stuff is using docker compose, which works with Podman, but using straight docker is easier, especially if it’s nothing web-facing
Funnily enough Docker compose has never worked for me on Podman. There always seems to be something that is incompatible (also due to me running on Debian). However, I feel like it should become a standard amongst homelabbers and professionals to use Kubernetes manifests going forward, since it is the most portable.