Fudgeknuckles98Why should I get a VPS over self hosting?
SwingingKoalaWhat do you mean, buy a VPS, you rent them as they are virtual. Do you mean a co-located dedicated server? And what is “self hosting” to you?
Apologies, I meant rent a VPS. When I mentioned self hosting I meant hosting it myself on my own hardware and my own network
Dunno, I host all my personal services at home. I do have VPS for public services, websites etc. If you host at home you still pay for power, hardware etc. That being said, you most likely want local storage which needs some cpu power anyway, so you can certainly host some services at home. In the end it’s a matter of personal preference mostly.
If you think about it like renting vs buying a house it makes sense. A VPS means hardware problems are not your problem and you can switch or upgrade for free anytime, but you pay more in the long term.
Also, the costs don’t end when you buy your own hardware. Power ain’t free and swapping out components when they die does add up, especially hard drives.
poVoqAlso you need to be aware that it is a virtual server, meaning you share resources with others and the cheap VPS providers over provision their servers quite aggressively.
TheInsane42Depends on what you want to do and how technical you are.
Main advantage of hosting on your own hardware from home are cost and ease of access. Main drawback is that you need to give acces to your home network when you want to provide services. When you know what you do and your connection is fast enough, that isn’t a problem.
The main advantage of a VPS, which you rent instead of buy, is the flexibility and keeping security threats out of your home network. You can activate one for the service you like to provide, keep it alive until you don’t need it and have it detstroyed. Security issues may exist, but they are out of your home network. In the long run they are more expensive.
You can also combine both, host some services locally (RPi or a nuc) and some remote on a vps.
Here I run several personal websites local, but the DNS of my domains, incoming email and business websites are hosted on a set of VPS’es (set as you need 2 for dns). All websites are static, no management software what so ever, as most are (huge) security risks. For email I use the main VPS as 1st line of defence. Spam and virus scanning is done there.
I could use my RPis to do all locally, but I prefer to have DNS and email externally. Also, my only surviving client would be leaving when I run everything from home. (He’s basically paying for the servers, I just keep them running, pay for them and send the bill ;) )
That’s really helpful thanks. My main reason for considering switching is for availability when outside of my home. I know I could port-foward but I am concerned about the security risks of that. I might buy one for just a month or two to see how it might help
node815What I do is this - and some may frown upon it because well…Cloudflare! But I use Cloudflare’s tunnels to access my remote instances for my password manager, Home Assistant and a SSH shell. All of which are behind passwords and 2FA. I then have only one port open on my router, that’s for my wireguard instance. I access it using my ddns and can be on my home network from anywhere.
I’d move away from the tunnels and push everything through WG, but my family is not as savvy as I am and don’t always activate the tunnel when away from home. I am putting a plan for that this weekend though. :)
I managed to put my family on wireguard. I said 'install this and come to me when you are done', I finished the setup and told them 'the key icon must always be visible'. I don't know how, but it worked 🤷
Personally I do both. My VPS takes care of stuff like DNS, Email, Webhosting, and a couple of light services such as Syncplay.
I use the Control Panel called ISPconfig for DNS email webhosting and etc.
Then I have Proxmox at home behind a reverse proxy for services such as Emby, Game servers, NAS, Mumble DJ Bot.
- Lower upfront costs and quicker to set up as you don’t have to buy the hardware
- Don’t have hardware taking up space in your home
- Flexibility of being able to scale up or down your specs (or get rid of the VPS entirely) at the click of a button
- Don’t have to open your home network to the internet
- Better uptime (not your job to fix outages)
Way better upload speeds, at least for me. Residential uploads speeds here are awful unless you have fiber.