I've been self hosting since the early 00s. I used to host: * Email (for years rolled my own using Procmail, Postfix, Squirrelmail before finally using Zimbra

I've been self hosting since the early 00s. I used to host: * Email (for years rolled my own using Procmail, Postfix, Squirrelmail before finally using Zimbra Email Server - an all in one software package) * FreeNAS/TrueNAS for storage (3x SC836 16 bay Supermicro servers) * VMware vSphere for virtualization (clustered setup with vmotion running on 2x dual Xeon servers) * Elastix IP Phone Server (Asterisk PBX hooked up to Aastra IP phones in every room in my house) * Cisco Call Manager - proprietary IP phone server (helped with my job...) * Plex + the usual accompanying VMs * HomeBridge + HomeAssistant * Openfire (because everyone needs their own chat server) * ZoneMinder (CCTV server hooked up to cameras around the property) * Zabbix (to monitor it all) The whole family (about 20 folks) would use the above for their day to day personal and small businesses. It got to the point where I was spending several hundred in licenses and close to £1k in electricity a year. I'd get paid by some folks to maintain the above, but after a while the fun of building gets replaced by the chore of maintaining - and the few outages I've had (can count on one hand - proudly) were a royal PITA since I'd have to drop everything and try and get it back online again. In the 2000s and 2010s the skills my homelab taught me were still relevant; Routing, VLANs, Firewalls, NAT, subnets. But having just studied for an AWS certification I was struck by how much less application those basic skills have in today's marketplace - the cloud has representations of those sure, but maintaining a homelab doesn't give you exposure to what a VPC or a Security Group is. Also back in the day it was far cheaper to self host vs rent servers in the cloud - today (especially after energy price increases in the UK) self hosting my now much smaller homelab of 1x Intel NUC and two Synology boxes (250W total) is gonna cost about £640 a year in electricity alone. That'll buy me a lot of stuff in AWS/GCP and frankly I'd rather have the practise and experience with a more relevant tech stack.