13 ms·

Without building and running your own full-blown PC at home, I think the best option is a consumer NAS. Which are great; I love mine. But they don't seem to a

Without building and running your own full-blown PC at home, I think the best option is a consumer NAS. Which are great; I love mine. But they don't seem to advertise and very few people know it's a really good option (with phone apps to replace the cloud ones, even).

megous 7y ago
It's possible to run server software on HW that costs $10-$15 + a cost of a SD card ($6 for 32GB). Power bill is negligible and there's no noise. It's very cheap to run self-hosted these days even on your own HW. 1GB/20GB VMs cost $1-$2 per month. Really, this should be an age of self-hosted if the cost was ever a limit.
- noobermin 7y ago
  Been wanting to start try nextcloudpi[0] but I need the time to learn and set it up (even if it's an hour of reading). My point is for someone not as willing to learn as me, it's at least harder than signing up for OneDrive, Dropbox, etc. [0] https://ownyourbits.com/nextcloudpi/ https://ownyourbits.com/nextcloudpi/
  - benhurmarcel 7y ago
    I've been thinking of getting a Nextcloud instance at Hetzner maybe. It's fairly easy, and managed.
- lallysingh 7y ago
  It's the software support and maintenance that's hard. Replacement apps and configuration. Especially if you want to do email...
  - megous 7y ago
    You can't really do e-mail from home anyway, unless you get some tunnel to a fixed IP address that can build trust. But it's possible to run all kinds of other stuff, if you know how. All kinds of scratch your itch apps, monitoring, backup, small web apps, file sharing, audio server, seedbox, databases, etc. Stuff you'd not find a service for, because it violates copyright when it's not done for personal use, etc. It's especially useful if there are multiple people in the household. Most of what you list are or can be one-time costs. And most of it can be automated in a run-a-script, check for errors and forget about it in 1 minute, or deal with some failure in 15minutes. The main benefit of running your own is that there are almost no ongoing costs. Lot's of the SaaS prices are really overblown, so running your own is appealing there. And people spend time and stress on dealing with SaaS issues too from time to time, so it's not like you just pay and use without any additional costs. It just needs a serious consideration. Also running your own can be fun/fulfilling in its own way, because you now have more control and you're allowed more creativity. For some people that may ba a benefit too.
    - lallysingh 7y ago
      I picked up a Synology, it has replacement apps for photos (the big one) and others. Super easy, and it'll run docker images.
Shaddox 7y ago
Aren't consumer NAS expensive?
- lallysingh 7y ago
  Less than a cheapish laptop, generally. More depending on storage and CPU/ram.

megous 7y ago

It's possible to run server software on HW that costs $10-$15 + a cost of a SD card ($6 for 32GB). Power bill is negligible and there's no noise. It's very cheap to run self-hosted these days even on your own HW. 1GB/20GB VMs cost $1-$2 per month. Really, this should be an age of self-hosted if the cost was ever a limit.

noobermin 7y ago
Been wanting to start try nextcloudpi[0] but I need the time to learn and set it up (even if it's an hour of reading). My point is for someone not as willing to learn as me, it's at least harder than signing up for OneDrive, Dropbox, etc. [0] https://ownyourbits.com/nextcloudpi/ https://ownyourbits.com/nextcloudpi/
- benhurmarcel 7y ago
  I've been thinking of getting a Nextcloud instance at Hetzner maybe. It's fairly easy, and managed.
lallysingh 7y ago
It's the software support and maintenance that's hard. Replacement apps and configuration. Especially if you want to do email...
- megous 7y ago
  You can't really do e-mail from home anyway, unless you get some tunnel to a fixed IP address that can build trust. But it's possible to run all kinds of other stuff, if you know how. All kinds of scratch your itch apps, monitoring, backup, small web apps, file sharing, audio server, seedbox, databases, etc. Stuff you'd not find a service for, because it violates copyright when it's not done for personal use, etc. It's especially useful if there are multiple people in the household. Most of what you list are or can be one-time costs. And most of it can be automated in a run-a-script, check for errors and forget about it in 1 minute, or deal with some failure in 15minutes. The main benefit of running your own is that there are almost no ongoing costs. Lot's of the SaaS prices are really overblown, so running your own is appealing there. And people spend time and stress on dealing with SaaS issues too from time to time, so it's not like you just pay and use without any additional costs. It just needs a serious consideration. Also running your own can be fun/fulfilling in its own way, because you now have more control and you're allowed more creativity. For some people that may ba a benefit too.
  - lallysingh 7y ago
    I picked up a Synology, it has replacement apps for photos (the big one) and others. Super easy, and it'll run docker images.

Shaddox 7y ago

Aren't consumer NAS expensive?

lallysingh 7y ago
Less than a cheapish laptop, generally. More depending on storage and CPU/ram.