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Self-hosting is just responsible computing now. The big companies are just too big to care about small businesses, and will use your data in any way that they p

by oidar 2y ago

Self-hosting is just responsible computing now. The big companies are just too big to care about small businesses, and will use your data in any way that they please - take it or leave it. And it's cheaper to boot. A synology NAS or a raspberry pi 3 could cover 90% of what most internet services offer the average consumer/small business right now.

throwanem 2y ago
You're leaving out "and having someone on staff or contract who can administer it for you".
- orev 2y ago
  Because with cloud providers you don’t need anyone on staff to understand the product, keep up with the constant changes and predatory features they slip in, manage the cost overruns, or help to migrate away from their proprietary data formats once you’ve had enough of their “whaddaya gonna do about it?” treatment of customers?
  - mikestew 2y ago
    True or not, it doesn't invalidate GP's statement. You don't just throw a NAS in Mom's garage and call it a day.
    - Cheer2171 2y ago
      Yes, it isn't bare metal vs cloud, it is being your own sysadmin vs relying on someone to sysadmin for you
      - dvfjsdhgfv 2y ago
        I don't get your point. It doesn't matter if you host your stuff on AWS, Hetzner, or locally on a Pi, you need someone to manage that. If you are this someone, great, if not, you need to pay someone else. And contrary to what private cloud providers advertise,[0] the amount of work is similar in each case. [Or used to, around 2006 or so - I'm not sure if they still claim managing public cloud resources is means less work.]
    - orev 2y ago
      It does invalidate the argument. They’re implying that with self hosting you need someone to manage it, but with cloud you don’t. The truth is you need someone managing both scenarios, and the cost remains roughly the same.
      - throwanem 2y ago
        Does it? It is a lot easier to find people who can work with Office 365 than who can stand up and maintain a comparable suite of selfhosted services, especially when considering needs like secure remote access. I don't know who else here has ever actually done the kind of work that we're talking about, but I have, for contract clients, over the span of most of a decade. Between G Suite and Office 365, those jobs dried up fast about a decade ago, and I wasn't sorry; the thing about selfhosted deployments of this type is that no matter how standard you try to make the platform, clients' requirements persist in varying, so each deployment ends up a somewhat different artifact whose differences, because those get less investment of effort than the common aspects, are always what cause the most problems and cost the most money in maintenance. No one was sorry to see that expense dwindle with the rise of SaaS officeware platforms; even for me, it wasn't a loss, because it freed up my time for more interesting and lucrative engagements. Of course I'm sure that, for those of you saying this is easy, your experience is different from mine. It would be really interesting to hear more about how you've been able to make selfhosted deployments work so well for folks who aren't technical. That's a really significant achievement! Teams like Sandstorm have spent years at it and come away with nothing of import to show, and I'm sure I'm not alone in wanting to know more about how folks here have overcome the same challenges.
- silverquiet 2y ago
  I actually went to the DC yesterday. It had been 6 months since I had been there and everything was running fine (and has been for 2 years now). I just had a small addition. I don't love the drive, but it's really not much of my time to manage it.
  - throwanem 2y ago
    By the sound of it, you are exactly the person I was talking about needing to have on staff. That's a good kind of person to be (I say, while being likewise), but I'm not sure it makes for an effective counterargument from experience.
    - silverquiet 2y ago
      Yes, but my point is that I can do a lot of stuff that isn't just DCops work; in fact it's a very small part of my job. I handle all the infrastructure to include cloud and some managed services as well. Kinda the nature of a small company - you just do what needs doing.
      - throwanem 2y ago
        Sure, I get that, but my point is that most small businesses aren't going to have or want someone with that set of skills. Those in and around the tech industry will, sure, but that isn't most small businesses. And selfhosted equivalents of SaaS officeware packages really aren't the sort of thing that can be reliably set up and managed on a "do what needs doing" basis - not because most people can't learn, but because starting from what you know as a user that's quite a bit of learning, and time thus better spent on any of the other forty dozen things that always want doing to keep a small shop afloat. It would be nice if the tooling really was simple enough that wasn't so, but despite considerable effort to make it so from Sandstorm among others over quite a long time, as far as I know no one's had notable success in achieving that. Hence the rise and continued prominence of SaaS providers, who abstract all of that effort behind an SLA and a monthly fee. I agree with the criticism of SaaS platform behavior at the head of this thread. What I think the commenters on that side of the discussion are missing or maybe ignoring, is that much of the value a SaaS offering provides is in not having to (pay someone to) administer that stuff yourself - and that, considered separately from the question of how providers behave, "all you have to think about is 'pay us and use our stuff'" is in the general case a strong value proposition.
poisonborz 2y ago
Yes but it's just too hard for even experienced people. Even harder to have good reliability, backup. I'm etching my rather average needs setup for a decade and there are still issues and I couldn't yet fully decouple. Life is short man. There are new tools, apps and solutions every year (easy vm handling, kinda easy vpn, projects like Wireguard, Immich) but overall there are huge things missing to make selfhosting a thing for common people.
- oidar 2y ago
  It's pretty easy right now. Synology makes things so, so simple and Yunohost is closing in right behind. If you can manage a large spreadsheet, I don't see why you wouldn't use one of those systems.

by oidar 2y ago

throwanem 2y ago

You're leaving out "and having someone on staff or contract who can administer it for you".

orev 2y ago
Because with cloud providers you don’t need anyone on staff to understand the product, keep up with the constant changes and predatory features they slip in, manage the cost overruns, or help to migrate away from their proprietary data formats once you’ve had enough of their “whaddaya gonna do about it?” treatment of customers?
- mikestew 2y ago
  True or not, it doesn't invalidate GP's statement. You don't just throw a NAS in Mom's garage and call it a day.
  - Cheer2171 2y ago
    Yes, it isn't bare metal vs cloud, it is being your own sysadmin vs relying on someone to sysadmin for you
    - dvfjsdhgfv 2y ago
      I don't get your point. It doesn't matter if you host your stuff on AWS, Hetzner, or locally on a Pi, you need someone to manage that. If you are this someone, great, if not, you need to pay someone else. And contrary to what private cloud providers advertise,[0] the amount of work is similar in each case. [Or used to, around 2006 or so - I'm not sure if they still claim managing public cloud resources is means less work.]
  - orev 2y ago
    It does invalidate the argument. They’re implying that with self hosting you need someone to manage it, but with cloud you don’t. The truth is you need someone managing both scenarios, and the cost remains roughly the same.
    - throwanem 2y ago
      Does it? It is a lot easier to find people who can work with Office 365 than who can stand up and maintain a comparable suite of selfhosted services, especially when considering needs like secure remote access. I don't know who else here has ever actually done the kind of work that we're talking about, but I have, for contract clients, over the span of most of a decade. Between G Suite and Office 365, those jobs dried up fast about a decade ago, and I wasn't sorry; the thing about selfhosted deployments of this type is that no matter how standard you try to make the platform, clients' requirements persist in varying, so each deployment ends up a somewhat different artifact whose differences, because those get less investment of effort than the common aspects, are always what cause the most problems and cost the most money in maintenance. No one was sorry to see that expense dwindle with the rise of SaaS officeware platforms; even for me, it wasn't a loss, because it freed up my time for more interesting and lucrative engagements. Of course I'm sure that, for those of you saying this is easy, your experience is different from mine. It would be really interesting to hear more about how you've been able to make selfhosted deployments work so well for folks who aren't technical. That's a really significant achievement! Teams like Sandstorm have spent years at it and come away with nothing of import to show, and I'm sure I'm not alone in wanting to know more about how folks here have overcome the same challenges.
silverquiet 2y ago
I actually went to the DC yesterday. It had been 6 months since I had been there and everything was running fine (and has been for 2 years now). I just had a small addition. I don't love the drive, but it's really not much of my time to manage it.
- throwanem 2y ago
  By the sound of it, you are exactly the person I was talking about needing to have on staff. That's a good kind of person to be (I say, while being likewise), but I'm not sure it makes for an effective counterargument from experience.
  - silverquiet 2y ago
    Yes, but my point is that I can do a lot of stuff that isn't just DCops work; in fact it's a very small part of my job. I handle all the infrastructure to include cloud and some managed services as well. Kinda the nature of a small company - you just do what needs doing.
    - throwanem 2y ago
      Sure, I get that, but my point is that most small businesses aren't going to have or want someone with that set of skills. Those in and around the tech industry will, sure, but that isn't most small businesses. And selfhosted equivalents of SaaS officeware packages really aren't the sort of thing that can be reliably set up and managed on a "do what needs doing" basis - not because most people can't learn, but because starting from what you know as a user that's quite a bit of learning, and time thus better spent on any of the other forty dozen things that always want doing to keep a small shop afloat. It would be nice if the tooling really was simple enough that wasn't so, but despite considerable effort to make it so from Sandstorm among others over quite a long time, as far as I know no one's had notable success in achieving that. Hence the rise and continued prominence of SaaS providers, who abstract all of that effort behind an SLA and a monthly fee. I agree with the criticism of SaaS platform behavior at the head of this thread. What I think the commenters on that side of the discussion are missing or maybe ignoring, is that much of the value a SaaS offering provides is in not having to (pay someone to) administer that stuff yourself - and that, considered separately from the question of how providers behave, "all you have to think about is 'pay us and use our stuff'" is in the general case a strong value proposition.

poisonborz 2y ago

Yes but it's just too hard for even experienced people. Even harder to have good reliability, backup. I'm etching my rather average needs setup for a decade and there are still issues and I couldn't yet fully decouple. Life is short man. There are new tools, apps and solutions every year (easy vm handling, kinda easy vpn, projects like Wireguard, Immich) but overall there are huge things missing to make selfhosting a thing for common people.

oidar 2y ago
It's pretty easy right now. Synology makes things so, so simple and Yunohost is closing in right behind. If you can manage a large spreadsheet, I don't see why you wouldn't use one of those systems.