6 ms·

I really thought this article was going to offer a solution, not just enumerate the problems. I'm already all too familiar with the problems. I like what Umbre

by smeej 3y ago

I really thought this article was going to offer a solution, not just enumerate the problems. I'm already all too familiar with the problems. I like what Umbrel[0] is doing. They're essentially expecting that just like computing was able to move from centralized mainframes to homes, servers are poised to make the same migration. I think they really need to solve redundancy, though. If I'm to self-host anything important on a home server, I need to know I'll have some way to use it even if my home server fails, especially if I'm not at home when it happens. I'd love to see some kind of system where I could partner up with other Umbrel users for backups/the ability to restore connectivity. If I knew that in an emergency, I could call my friend in town or my brother out of state and there was some procedure that would allow me to connect to an encrypted backup of what I'm needing, I would feel a lot better about taking responsibility for my own system. [0] https://umbrel.com https://umbrel.com

pcstl 3y ago
Is Umbrel just actually usable Urbit? [0] [0] https://urbit.org/ https://urbit.org/
- smeej 3y ago
  No, I don't think so. I think it's closer to "a plug-and-play computer for self-hostable apps, running locally, with most things configured so you're reasonably secure and you don't have to guess about everything."
  - pcstl 3y ago
    That's pretty much what Urbit wanted to be, to be fair, just with a strong networking component powered by a decentralized identity system. It's just too esoteric to have meaningful traction as that.
cabalamat 3y ago
> I think they really need to solve redundancy They could offer a service that backs up your local Umbrel server to their central servers. This would provide reassurance that your data is backed up, and give them a revenue stream.
- cl3misch 3y ago
  Or an append-only, E2EE backup to another Umbrel at e.g. your parents house?
  - cabalamat 3y ago
    That works too.
pants2 3y ago
Running servers at home is surprisingly easy, especially if you have a good ISP. With AT&T Fiber, you can get 5Gbps symmetric internet with dedicated IPs at $3/mo each. With a few threadripper servers and a basic UPS and you have the setup for a real serious home datacenter. I just haven't solved the off-site data backup part of it, yet.
- ebb_earl_co 3y ago
  Where are you that that level of connectivity is available!?
  - agilob 3y ago
    My take on it: It doesn't really matter at that level tbh. I used to chase that level of connectivity until covid happened. I was working from home on am ADSL with 37mbps download, 10mbps upload. I didn't use much internet at home before 2023 so I always had the cheapest broadband plan. Then I started WFH and the same for my partner and I had a homelab. My ISP offered me 150mbps for just £3 more per month, and then I realised... I don't really need it? I was just fine with the same broadband plan from 2015. I changed my location a few times, taking my homelab with me, I moved cities and countries, I'm still using the same DDNS service and as long as my 80 and 443 ports are open, I can transfer anything at any time to and from my network. It's 2023 and I'm still using the cheapest plan my ISP offers, the same hardware since ~2018 and I'm just fine with that. I run k3s, a few docker services, network-wide adblocker, monitoring in grafana and many more etc. Everything works just fine. Don't fall into the meme that you need IBM or HP server class hardware and 5Gbps fibre to run a homelab. I used to have IBM 3650x with +200Gb of RAM that I sold and bought 3x RPi4. I'm currently backing up 600Gib from my other servers, and it's completely fine that it will take a few days and nights ¯\(ツ)/¯ It's a hobby, I'm not paid for it, I'm not paid to maintain 99.999%, it's OK if it's not the best shit on /r/homelab
  - BrianHenryIE 3y ago
    I just looked it up and it's available for me in Sacramento for $225/month > Single-device wired speed maximum 4.7Gbps. https://www.att.com/buy/broadband/availability.html?product_suite=NBB&fiber_intent=true https://www.att.com/buy/broadband/availability.html?product_...
pmontra 3y ago
The real solution is in the last section "Beyond tech". Don't hold your breath though. The only viable solutions today are true self host or what they call self hosting as a service, by selecting a trusted provider. However all the big names in tech were trusted providers at some point of their history, so good luck with that.
RussianCow 3y ago
> I'd love to see some kind of system where I could partner up with other Umbrel users for backups/the ability to restore connectivity. If I knew that in an emergency, I could call my friend in town or my brother out of state and there was some procedure that would allow me to connect to an encrypted backup of what I'm needing, I would feel a lot better about taking responsibility for my own system. I'm working on self-hosting my own "personal cloud" (NextCloud with a few other services), and I strongly debated just getting an Umbrel, but this is what kept me from doing so. Instead, I'm going the DIY route with two machines, one in my house and one at my parents', and we're each going to have data replicated across both machines and encrypted at rest. If Umbrel offered this out of the box, I would probably just use that to save me the time.
- Helmut10001 3y ago
  Doing this for the last 7 years, too. One server at my parents, one at my home. Connected via IPSEC. I just migrated to ZFS on my offsite backup, too - this is just perfect with syncoid/sanoid atomatic backups and zfs-pull of dataset. Fine grained security but robust at the same time. It is the first time I feel reasonable safe regarding the "worst" that can happen.
  - PrimeMcFly 3y ago
    > Connected via IPSEC Why IPSEC?
  - _a_a_a_ 3y ago
    How close geographically are you and your parents – are you fed off the same electricity supply?
    - Terr_ 3y ago
      Thinking of EMPs or Carrington events?
      - _a_a_a_ 3y ago
wmf 3y ago
The solution in the article is self-hosting as a service. You rent a VM in a data center, where servers belong, to host your stuff. Backups also seem like a mostly solved problem; there's plenty of software that can back up a server to your own cloud storage account.
- RussianCow 3y ago
  > You rent a VM in a data center, where servers belong, to host your stuff. If you rent from an actual data center, you pay for a ton of stuff you don't really need for personal backups. If your home internet goes out and you can't access your personal cloud for a bit, it's likely not a big deal, so you don't need the level of redundancy that a data center gives you. On the flip side, the premium you pay for professionally hosted storage is enormous compared to buying a hard drive.
  - wmf 3y ago
    IMO the solution is cheaper, crappier data centers. OVH and Hetzner are most of the way there but there's probably more savings possible. Local storage is free or cheap with VMs so I don't see that as a problem.
    - RussianCow 3y ago
      I priced this out somewhat recently, and the lowest price I could get renting a server with >=2TB of storage is $11/month using the OVH Eco line, and that's without ECC (which I consider to be non-negotiable), FS-level compression (IIRC you can't change file systems with OVH), or redundancy in case the server/disk fails. I'm currently working on a DIY setup with two nodes equipped with 8GB ECC memory, 2TB of storage (with Btrfs compression to get even more storage out of it), and considerably more processing power than the OVH servers. My total up front cost is going to be about $400, with an estimated $25/year in electricity. The most comparable OVH offering would cost $403 in the first year (with RAID but without a second node), so my DIY solution basically pays for itself after that, and I can upgrade the hardware anytime I want. Of course, there is an obvious argument to be made that my time is worth more than the cost savings, but I've been learning a lot so I instead consider it a free education. :)
bawana 3y ago
synology has this with their NASes. Makes spinning up your own private cloud simple.
FloatArtifact 3y ago
Unfortunately I see nothing about backing up and restoring apps data
georgeecollins 3y ago
I believe part of the solution-- that big tech hates-- is AI bots that pretend to be us and provide so much noise they make the signal difficult to find. An example would be browser plug ins that "click everything". If an AI bot clicks on every ad and signs you up for every free service and fills a lot of forms with incorrect data the value of surveillance is much lower. The problem with this is Google in particular hates it. If they think you are using bots in this way they will ban you from all of their services. I have heard that. I don't know if it is true but don't want to risk it.
- kibwen 3y ago
  > If they think you are using bots in this way they will ban you from all of their services. If you're self-hosting everything like the person above recommends, then the only services that they can ban you from are the services that show you ads, which sounds like a win.

by smeej 3y ago

pcstl 3y ago

Is Umbrel just actually usable Urbit? [0] [0] https://urbit.org/ https://urbit.org/

smeej 3y ago
No, I don't think so. I think it's closer to "a plug-and-play computer for self-hostable apps, running locally, with most things configured so you're reasonably secure and you don't have to guess about everything."
- pcstl 3y ago
  That's pretty much what Urbit wanted to be, to be fair, just with a strong networking component powered by a decentralized identity system. It's just too esoteric to have meaningful traction as that.

cabalamat 3y ago

> I think they really need to solve redundancy They could offer a service that backs up your local Umbrel server to their central servers. This would provide reassurance that your data is backed up, and give them a revenue stream.

cl3misch 3y ago
Or an append-only, E2EE backup to another Umbrel at e.g. your parents house?
- cabalamat 3y ago
  That works too.

pants2 3y ago

Running servers at home is surprisingly easy, especially if you have a good ISP. With AT&T Fiber, you can get 5Gbps symmetric internet with dedicated IPs at $3/mo each. With a few threadripper servers and a basic UPS and you have the setup for a real serious home datacenter. I just haven't solved the off-site data backup part of it, yet.

ebb_earl_co 3y ago
Where are you that that level of connectivity is available!?
- agilob 3y ago
  My take on it: It doesn't really matter at that level tbh. I used to chase that level of connectivity until covid happened. I was working from home on am ADSL with 37mbps download, 10mbps upload. I didn't use much internet at home before 2023 so I always had the cheapest broadband plan. Then I started WFH and the same for my partner and I had a homelab. My ISP offered me 150mbps for just £3 more per month, and then I realised... I don't really need it? I was just fine with the same broadband plan from 2015. I changed my location a few times, taking my homelab with me, I moved cities and countries, I'm still using the same DDNS service and as long as my 80 and 443 ports are open, I can transfer anything at any time to and from my network. It's 2023 and I'm still using the cheapest plan my ISP offers, the same hardware since ~2018 and I'm just fine with that. I run k3s, a few docker services, network-wide adblocker, monitoring in grafana and many more etc. Everything works just fine. Don't fall into the meme that you need IBM or HP server class hardware and 5Gbps fibre to run a homelab. I used to have IBM 3650x with +200Gb of RAM that I sold and bought 3x RPi4. I'm currently backing up 600Gib from my other servers, and it's completely fine that it will take a few days and nights ¯\(ツ)/¯ It's a hobby, I'm not paid for it, I'm not paid to maintain 99.999%, it's OK if it's not the best shit on /r/homelab
- BrianHenryIE 3y ago
  I just looked it up and it's available for me in Sacramento for $225/month > Single-device wired speed maximum 4.7Gbps. https://www.att.com/buy/broadband/availability.html?product_suite=NBB&fiber_intent=true https://www.att.com/buy/broadband/availability.html?product_...

pmontra 3y ago

The real solution is in the last section "Beyond tech". Don't hold your breath though. The only viable solutions today are true self host or what they call self hosting as a service, by selecting a trusted provider. However all the big names in tech were trusted providers at some point of their history, so good luck with that.

RussianCow 3y ago

> I'd love to see some kind of system where I could partner up with other Umbrel users for backups/the ability to restore connectivity. If I knew that in an emergency, I could call my friend in town or my brother out of state and there was some procedure that would allow me to connect to an encrypted backup of what I'm needing, I would feel a lot better about taking responsibility for my own system. I'm working on self-hosting my own "personal cloud" (NextCloud with a few other services), and I strongly debated just getting an Umbrel, but this is what kept me from doing so. Instead, I'm going the DIY route with two machines, one in my house and one at my parents', and we're each going to have data replicated across both machines and encrypted at rest. If Umbrel offered this out of the box, I would probably just use that to save me the time.

Helmut10001 3y ago
Doing this for the last 7 years, too. One server at my parents, one at my home. Connected via IPSEC. I just migrated to ZFS on my offsite backup, too - this is just perfect with syncoid/sanoid atomatic backups and zfs-pull of dataset. Fine grained security but robust at the same time. It is the first time I feel reasonable safe regarding the "worst" that can happen.
- PrimeMcFly 3y ago
  > Connected via IPSEC Why IPSEC?
- _a_a_a_ 3y ago
  How close geographically are you and your parents – are you fed off the same electricity supply?
  - Terr_ 3y ago
    Thinking of EMPs or Carrington events?
    - _a_a_a_ 3y ago

wmf 3y ago

The solution in the article is self-hosting as a service. You rent a VM in a data center, where servers belong, to host your stuff. Backups also seem like a mostly solved problem; there's plenty of software that can back up a server to your own cloud storage account.

RussianCow 3y ago
> You rent a VM in a data center, where servers belong, to host your stuff. If you rent from an actual data center, you pay for a ton of stuff you don't really need for personal backups. If your home internet goes out and you can't access your personal cloud for a bit, it's likely not a big deal, so you don't need the level of redundancy that a data center gives you. On the flip side, the premium you pay for professionally hosted storage is enormous compared to buying a hard drive.
- wmf 3y ago
  IMO the solution is cheaper, crappier data centers. OVH and Hetzner are most of the way there but there's probably more savings possible. Local storage is free or cheap with VMs so I don't see that as a problem.
  - RussianCow 3y ago
    I priced this out somewhat recently, and the lowest price I could get renting a server with >=2TB of storage is $11/month using the OVH Eco line, and that's without ECC (which I consider to be non-negotiable), FS-level compression (IIRC you can't change file systems with OVH), or redundancy in case the server/disk fails. I'm currently working on a DIY setup with two nodes equipped with 8GB ECC memory, 2TB of storage (with Btrfs compression to get even more storage out of it), and considerably more processing power than the OVH servers. My total up front cost is going to be about $400, with an estimated $25/year in electricity. The most comparable OVH offering would cost $403 in the first year (with RAID but without a second node), so my DIY solution basically pays for itself after that, and I can upgrade the hardware anytime I want. Of course, there is an obvious argument to be made that my time is worth more than the cost savings, but I've been learning a lot so I instead consider it a free education. :)

bawana 3y ago

synology has this with their NASes. Makes spinning up your own private cloud simple.

FloatArtifact 3y ago

Unfortunately I see nothing about backing up and restoring apps data

georgeecollins 3y ago

I believe part of the solution-- that big tech hates-- is AI bots that pretend to be us and provide so much noise they make the signal difficult to find. An example would be browser plug ins that "click everything". If an AI bot clicks on every ad and signs you up for every free service and fills a lot of forms with incorrect data the value of surveillance is much lower. The problem with this is Google in particular hates it. If they think you are using bots in this way they will ban you from all of their services. I have heard that. I don't know if it is true but don't want to risk it.

kibwen 3y ago
> If they think you are using bots in this way they will ban you from all of their services. If you're self-hosting everything like the person above recommends, then the only services that they can ban you from are the services that show you ads, which sounds like a win.