What is a fun gadget you have purchased that has added value to your life? - eviltoast
  • blackstrat@lemmy.fwgx.uk
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    1 year ago

    A home server. Originally a Dell R710, now a custom built desktop.

    If I can possibly self host something now I will do that over using big tech proprietary services. I feel free.

    • dan@upvote.au
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      1 year ago

      Just don’t forget backups! I use Borgbackup for mine.

      I know some people don’t want a home server because of the space it’d take up, but you can get pretty powerful mini PCs these days (look for ones with an i3-N305 processor) or buy cheap second-hand ex-office PCs on eBay.

      For people that still don’t want to have a physical server at their house, you can do a lot of the same self-hosting stuff using a VPS. If you live in an area with expensive electricity (like California or Australia), you can usually get a VPS with a modern processor, ~8GB RAM, and a decent amount of NVMe disk space for $5/month or less, which is easily what it’d cost you just for the electricity usage of a home server.

    • /home/pineapplelover@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      How do you access it away from home. I’m able to access my NAS since Synology gives us a domain to use and we do everything using port forwarding. I would assume that if you set everything up by yourself, you would need to get your own domain and ssl certificates and everything?

      • blackstrat@lemmy.fwgx.uk
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        11 months ago

        I have a domain name on cloudflare DNS, Let’s Encrypt certificates that auto renew and an Nginx reverse proxy pointing at the services I host. Port forwarding through the opnsense router for https.

        It’s been a journey setting it up, but its basically been unchanged for about 5 years now and works well. If I need to I can VPN in too.