What do I need to start self hosting? reddit / selfhosted ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Thedinotamer01 · 2023-11-30 22:26 Both software wise and hardware wise. I know I can use my old PC, but I don’t know for which part and I know there’s something called NAS but I don’t know what role that plays either. I also want to avoid using services like linode for example. I aim to start self hosting apps like nextcloud, jellyfin and bitwarden using vaultwarden ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Kended · 2023-11-30 22:48 Really all you need is a computer. Any computer can be used for self hosting, ideally if you're a beginner you're going to want to start with something cheap, that you can get the full use out of before moving to any big servers. I got into the hobby by starting with some Raspberry Pi's. They're great to learn on, and if you mess it up, its quick to flash the SD card and recreate everything. The first project I self hosted was Pi- Hole. It's a network wide DNS adblocking service. It was a nice start, and I still use it now almost a year later. Eventually I got into 3D printing and realized Pihole and Octoprint clashed with ports, so I learned about containerization. This got me into using Docker, which is used to self host containerized applications. Think of them like little virtual machines for a single application. Learning Docker is HUGE and a very valuable skill for hosting. Now my Raspberry Pi 4 is running Octoprint, Heimdall, Nextcloud, Pihole, Portainer, Uptime Kuma, and a few other services. Eventually you'll want to move your Pi to run off of an SSD to prevent corruption via the SD card, and I use a 500gb SSD for nextcloud, but an SD card is fine for starting out. After getting my feet wet with the Pi, I wanted more power for a media server. I bought a little Micro Dell Optiplex 7060 and got into Proxmox. Proxmox is an OS that essentially is used to spin up other Virtual Machines and LXC containers. It's like a higher level Docker almost, and it's very useful. In there I got into creating VM's to test other OS', while also creating a media server. Learning how to connect everything up to automate content retrieval was a real blast. Not to mention using gluetun as a VPN container for qbittorent to torrent through was great! This taught me a lot about VMs, VPNs, and even more about containers. The point is, all you need is a simple computer. Expand to bigger and better devices once you find yourself lacking the power to do what you want. You'll see some people get into the hobby and go out and buy some crazy server, and then their first post will be "What do I put on this?". As for your questions, a NAS is networked attached storage, and an UPS is uninterruptible power supply. A NAS is used as storage for the whole network, and is a device that usually has multiple drives and is accessible by devices on the network. An UPS is used to provide power in the event of a brownout or blackout. They usually only last for a few minutes, and are used to safely shut down any servers/devices to prevent any issues with corruption or hard shutdowns. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Thedinotamer01 · 2023-11-30 23:09 I’ve tried to find good step-by-step guides on youtube without any luck. Only one from techhut where he showed how to make a cheap and easy homelab server using ubuntu server and CasaOS, but I was hoping to use unraid so that guide probably doesn’t work for me? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- JoaGamo · 2023-12-01 00:31 I started with literally my gaming pc. While I was playing minecraft I was hosting in the background the minecraft server ---------------------------------------------------------------------- rcm_rx7 · 2023-12-01 01:42 The one I originally followed was on installing Proxmox, then TrueNas, and utilizing that storage for the rest of your Proxmox LXCs and VMs. I didn't do a lot of research before honestly and just jumped in and started learning as I went. I like Proxmox because I'm easily able to test out different VMs, back them up, delete them. And it's fairly easy to start over or migrate to new hardware. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Over-Advice6046 · 2023-12-01 04:35 You just need a computer, or old laptop (i've started with this, until now). Start small and then upgrade and upgrade until you satisfied with the performance on your server. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- sirrush7 · 2023-12-01 05:31 Also a keyboard, those are quite "handy"! Rgb barf optional... I'll see myself out. Ps. Dockers for llliiifffeeee Pps. https://www.linuxserver.io/blog is a great place to start! Their dockers are the cats meow!!! Don't forget, keyboard, it's important! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Archmage_Gaming · 2023-12-01 06:43 NAS stands for "Network Attached Storage" and is exactly how it sounds: a computer with storage that is accessed over your network. Some people have a dedicated NAS that's just for storage, but it's pretty common on this sub to have some apps like Jellyfin hosted on the same machine. While you can buy specialist hardware, any computer will work as a server as long as it has enough power and storage for your use case. Generally you should prioritise your CPU over GPU power unless you're doing something wild like running a virtual machine, which (I assume) you won't be doing. Media transcoding from Jellyfin doesn't take up that much GPU power, I have a mid-tier AMD card from 2010 in my server and I'm not even convinced it does anything 😂 For software, you have a few options. I personally use Unraid, which I've found to be easy to use and perfect for my use cases. It has its problems - it's paid and requires a USB stick in the server at all times for license verification, which can be a pain. However the interface is straightforward, there's a free trial available, and it can be a good teaching tool. It also lets you mix and match drives, which some other server OSes don't allow. There is also TrueNAS (which I have zero personal experience with but it's recommended often) and Cosmos, which is an up-and-coming server OS that is free, open source, and seems to be easy enough to pick up. UPSes are small boxes that plug in between the power socket and your computer. They protect whatever is plugged into them from power outages by running on battery power when there's a fault with the mains. They aren't required by any means but are definitely worth looking into if you're going to store any important data on the server without backing it up anywhere else. If you do decide to get one, do some research and make sure it can have a USB connection with your server so it can safely shut down if the power goes out. If you have any more questions feel free to DM me! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- tebeks · 2023-12-01 07:19 Hosting a simple web page in your home is a really good start point: Core tasks are really useful skills for self hosting - setup a home server for 24/7 operation - setup a web server - register a domain (can be a DDNS) - point it to your home - redirect some port from your router to your home server ---------------------------------------------------------------------- amarao_san · 2023-12-01 08:26 The main problem is running cost of electricity... ---------------------------------------------------------------------- lucassou · 2023-12-01 10:50 I might add, don't self host any important data without backups. Either you are willing to loose your data or you do backups :) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- spanky_rockets · 2023-12-01 13:13 There’s no right or wrong way to self host, is all about what you want to do with it. Only requirement is a computer.