Selfhosted

44464 readers

942 users here now

A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.

Rules:

Be civil: we're here to support and learn from one another. Insults won't be tolerated. Flame wars are frowned upon.
No spam posting.
Posts have to be centered around self-hosting. There are other communities for discussing hardware or home computing. If it's not obvious why your post topic revolves around selfhosting, please include details to make it clear.
Don't duplicate the full text of your blog or github here. Just post the link for folks to click.
Submission headline should match the article title (don’t cherry-pick information from the title to fit your agenda).
No trolling.

Resources:

selfh.st Newsletter and index of selfhosted software and apps
awesome-selfhosted software
awesome-sysadmin resources
Self-Hosted Podcast from Jupiter Broadcasting

Any issues on the community? Report it using the report flag.

Questions? DM the mods!

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

HybridSarcasm@lemmy.world

HybridSarcasm@lemmy.hybridsarcasm.xyz

160

When building a home server, could a used/cheap PC do the job? (lemmy.dbzer0.com)

submitted 21 hours ago by SpiceDealer@lemmy.dbzer0.com to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world

81 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I've never done any sort of home networking or self-hosting of any kind but thanks to Jellyfin and Mastodon I've become interested in the idea. As I understand it, physical servers ("bare metal" correct?) are PCs intended for data storing and hosting services instead of being used as a daily driver like my desktop. From my (admittedly) limited research, dedicated servers are a bit expensive. However, it seems that you can convert an old PC and even laptop into a server (examples here and here). But should I use that or are there dedicated servers at "affordable" price points. Since is this is first experience with self-hosting, which would be a better route to take?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] jia_tan@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago)

Servers are just really big computers. I started off with a Chinese Raspberry Pi clone, then upgraded to an old mac mini + mini pc + a cheap cloud server (VPS). As you can see, you can turn any old computer into a server.

The cloud is expensive but reliable. Having your own server is cheap but it will go offline with every network fault or brownout. If you’re serious about self hosting I suggest buying a UPS.

Whatever computer you decide to use as a server, make sure it is quiet. When I first started, I tried to use an old 2010 aah workstation as a server, but the fans were so loud I couldn’t sleep, it was driving me crazy.