3 ms·

If your site/app is not latency sensitive, then hosting this way can be better than the straight VPS. Maybe you need better resources than a cheap VPS can offe

If your site/app is not latency sensitive, then hosting this way can be better than the straight VPS. Maybe you need better resources than a cheap VPS can offer, i.e. an experimental app that likes a chunk of RAM and IO so won't be happy on an oversold & contended host, but doesn't need low latency or massive bandwidth¹ so is happy with the connectivity found on such a cheap service. Another consideration is that if the VPS host dies and you are just using it as a proxy/tunnel, all you need to do is sign up for another, change DNS pointers and perhaps VPN config, and you are back up and running: no extra app/stack configuration needed, no need to restore content from backups⁴ to the new location, ete., so time+faf to service restoration is short. ---- [1] It doesn't apply to all locations, as some are lucky to be in places where there has been sufficient infrastructure investment for FTTP to be inexpensively available, but for a lot of people a key limit to self-hosting is an asynchronous link: I know many with 1.4mbit or noticeably less upstream from home, the best I can reliably get here² is ~14mbit³ upstream. Most VPS providers that aren't ridiculously oversold can give you that, so their network would not be the outgoing connectivity bottleneck. [2] York, UK, not far from the city centre. FTTP is available in parts of the city and outskirts, but rollout is glacial so won't be near me any time soon [3] g.fast is available from the exchange/cab I'm connected through, but it is hit-and-miss and there is a risk I'll get less out of the nominally 150/30 standard than I do out of the 80/20 one. [4] though obviously: still keep good backups!

senko 4y ago
I somewhat agree with you (and with stuff like Tailscale it's incredibly easy to set up), with one big caveat, which you hinted at in the fourth footnote: you still need to maintain your home server. I am confident that my VPS provider (DigitalOcean) can maintain VPSs' better than I can (or want to), for example: automigrate for hadrware faults, cheap daily/weekly backup, and making sure it's up & running after power cycling the home (which is an infrequent but not unheard of situation where I live). Even for beefier setups, Hetzner (my go to provider for dedicated hw) still looks more appealing than setting it up at home, when I calculate hardware cost. If you have spare hardware sitting unused anyways, I'd agree. But on the main point we agree - if you know how to administer a server, it's easy to host, either home or on a VPS. The main drawback I see for common people is that they aren't gonna read up on nginx and postgres configs or set up minikube locally. That requires one-click setup for local use.
- dspillett 4y ago
  > more appealing than setting it up at home, when I calculate hardware cost That one can be complex. My home server does mainly private stuff so external bandwidth/latency isn't a big issue. Even accounting for cycling drives out¹² and other involuntary maintenance³ the cost of putting the machine together and keeping it running is lower than I'd have spent on the monthly costs of a similarly specced machine with a good provider. Power costs have made me reconsider that a bit in recent months, but hosting providers are putting up prices as they are subject to similar cost increases too so I'll wait a bit and see how that settles before making major changes. ---- [1] I've had a few failures over the years, though thanks to RAID I've never actually lost data due to that⁴. [2] Also for space upgrades, but that is an issue for externally hosted options too. [3] The PSU went fzzzt early last year. [4] Actual (temporary) data loss due to human error has occurred, but backups resolved those occurrences.

senko 4y ago

I somewhat agree with you (and with stuff like Tailscale it's incredibly easy to set up), with one big caveat, which you hinted at in the fourth footnote: you still need to maintain your home server. I am confident that my VPS provider (DigitalOcean) can maintain VPSs' better than I can (or want to), for example: automigrate for hadrware faults, cheap daily/weekly backup, and making sure it's up & running after power cycling the home (which is an infrequent but not unheard of situation where I live). Even for beefier setups, Hetzner (my go to provider for dedicated hw) still looks more appealing than setting it up at home, when I calculate hardware cost. If you have spare hardware sitting unused anyways, I'd agree. But on the main point we agree - if you know how to administer a server, it's easy to host, either home or on a VPS. The main drawback I see for common people is that they aren't gonna read up on nginx and postgres configs or set up minikube locally. That requires one-click setup for local use.

dspillett 4y ago
> more appealing than setting it up at home, when I calculate hardware cost That one can be complex. My home server does mainly private stuff so external bandwidth/latency isn't a big issue. Even accounting for cycling drives out¹² and other involuntary maintenance³ the cost of putting the machine together and keeping it running is lower than I'd have spent on the monthly costs of a similarly specced machine with a good provider. Power costs have made me reconsider that a bit in recent months, but hosting providers are putting up prices as they are subject to similar cost increases too so I'll wait a bit and see how that settles before making major changes. ---- [1] I've had a few failures over the years, though thanks to RAID I've never actually lost data due to that⁴. [2] Also for space upgrades, but that is an issue for externally hosted options too. [3] The PSU went fzzzt early last year. [4] Actual (temporary) data loss due to human error has occurred, but backups resolved those occurrences.