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> The irony is that self hosting is relatively simple, and alot of fun. Personally never got the appeal of Heroku, Vercel and similar, because theres nothing be

> The irony is that self hosting is relatively simple, and alot of fun. Personally never got the appeal of Heroku, Vercel and similar, because theres nothing better than spinning up a server and setting it up from scratch. It's fun the first time, but becomes an annoying faff when it has to be repeated constantly. In Heroku, Vercel and similar you git push and you're running. On a linux server you set up the OS, the server authentication, the application itself, the systemctl jobs, the reverse proxy, the code deployment, the ssl key management, the monitoring etc etc. I still do prefer a linux server due to the flexibility, but the UX could be a lot better.

YouAreWRONGtoo 1y ago
[flagged]
- dang 1y ago
  Can you please edit out swipes, putdowns, name-calling, etc., from your HN posts? It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
  - YouAreWRONGtoo 1y ago
    I can't help it that humanity is so stupid.
    - dang 1y ago
      That's true, but you can stop posting to HN from that place. Edit: I feel like I should give you a more fulsome response, so here goes: I understand the frustration. I feel it too, even apart from HN making me feel it as part of my job. But I've had to learn some lessons about this, such as: 1. It doesn't help to assume the position of the-one-who-is-not-stupid. Doing that is supercilious and just means you'll contribute to making things worse. 2. Far better is to accept that, as one is human, one shares in all the qualities of being human, including a full complement of stupidity. 3. I forget the third lesson!
      - YouAreWRONGtoo 1y ago
        Regarding 2., I am not stupid; I might be ignorant in some fields, but do you see me arguing against a world expert in some field I know nothing about? Stupid people ruin everything.
        dang 1y ago
        Ok, but please do stop posting to HN about how stupid others are. Being smarter is your burden to bear.
tbrownaw 1y ago
And all of that takes, what, a week? As a one time thing?
- jcynix 1y ago
  Takes less than a day, because most of the stuff is scriptable. And for a simple compute node setup at Hetzner (I.e. no bare metal, but just a VM) it takes me less than half an hour.
  - tbrownaw 1y ago
    But if you're that familiar with it, the overpriced turnkey stuff wouldn't look so tempting in the first place.
teekert 1y ago
I use NixOS and a lot of it is in a single file. I just saw some ansible coming by here, and although I have no experience with it, it looked a lot simpler than Nix (for someone from the old Linux world, like me… eventhough Nix is, looking through your eyelashes, just a pile of key/value pairs).
- eru 1y ago
  Nix is great, but it still requires some training and expertise. And the overlap between what Nix does and what the 'cloud' does for you is only partial. (Eg it can still make sense to use Nix in the cloud.)
bigstrat2003 1y ago
> It's fun the first time, but becomes an annoying faff when it has to be repeated constantly. Certainly true, but there are a whole lot of tools to automate those operations so that you aren't doing them constantly.
- liqilin1567 1y ago
  Mind sharing these tools and what each one does?
  - c0balt 1y ago
    Ansible, Salt and Puppet are mostly industry standard. Those tools are commonly referred to as configuration management (systems). Ansible basically automates the workflow of: log in to X, do step X (if Y is not present). It has broad support for distros and OSes. It's mostly imperative and can be used like a glorified task runner. Salt let's you mostly declaratively describe the state of a system. It comes with a agent/central host system for distributing this configuration from the central host to the minions (push). Puppet is also declarative and also comes with an agent/central host system but uses a pull based approach. Specialized/ exotic options are also available, like mgmt or NixOS.
    - liqilin1567 1y ago
      Thanks, this is very detailed! Could you share some real-world use cases for these tools? Actually I am looking for tools to automate DevOps and security for self-hosting
      - indigo945 1y ago
        Salt and Puppet are useful for managing a fleet of servers running various applications, especially when you need to scale those applications horizontally or want geo-distribution. Ansible can also do that, on top of literally anything else you could want - network configuration, infrastructure automation, deployment pipelines, migrations, anything. As always, that flexibility can be a blessing or a curse, but I think Ansible manages it well because it's so KISS. RedHat's commercial Ansible Automation Platform gives you more power for when you need it, but you don't need it starting out.
tonyhart7 1y ago
"The irony is that self hosting is relatively simple" cloud is easy until is not, for 90% of us maybe we dont need a multi region with hot and cold storage for those that need it, its neccesary
lelanthran 1y ago
> It's fun the first time, but becomes an annoying faff when it has to be repeated constantly. I have to ask - do scripts not work for you? When I had to do this back in 2005 it was automated with 3 main steps: 1. A preseed (IIRC) debian installation disc (all the packages I needed where installed at install time), and 2. Which included a first-boot bash script that retrieved pre-compiled binaries from our internal ftp site, and 3. A final script that applied changes to the default config files and ran a small test to ensure everything started. Zero human interaction after powering a machine on with the disc in the drive. These days I would do it even better (system-d configs, Nix perhaps, text files (such as systemd units) can be retrieved automagically after boot, etc).
- chickensong 1y ago
  Your example only covers basic provisioning. The additional items mentioned by the parent comment can be a significant investment, both initially and over time.
  - lelanthran 1y ago
    > Your example only covers basic provisioning. No. It covered setting up all the applications needed as well (nginx, monitoring agent, etc), installing keys/credentials. What did parent mention that can't be covered by the approach I used?
    - chickensong 1y ago
      I guess I read your comment as OS, the app, and configs, while the parent mentions auxiliary items, ending with "etc etc". The point is, all the extra things that aren't the app take knowledge and resources to set up and maintain. Sure you can script all the things into 3 steps, just like you can draw an owl with a couple circles.
      - lelanthran 1y ago
        > The point is, all the extra things that aren't the app take knowledge and resources to set up and maintain. Maintain, maybe. The setup for everything extra can scripted, and include a few packages I had to build from source myself because there was no binary download.

YouAreWRONGtoo 1y ago

[flagged]

dang 1y ago
Can you please edit out swipes, putdowns, name-calling, etc., from your HN posts? It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
- YouAreWRONGtoo 1y ago
  I can't help it that humanity is so stupid.
  - dang 1y ago
    That's true, but you can stop posting to HN from that place. Edit: I feel like I should give you a more fulsome response, so here goes: I understand the frustration. I feel it too, even apart from HN making me feel it as part of my job. But I've had to learn some lessons about this, such as: 1. It doesn't help to assume the position of the-one-who-is-not-stupid. Doing that is supercilious and just means you'll contribute to making things worse. 2. Far better is to accept that, as one is human, one shares in all the qualities of being human, including a full complement of stupidity. 3. I forget the third lesson!
    - YouAreWRONGtoo 1y ago
      Regarding 2., I am not stupid; I might be ignorant in some fields, but do you see me arguing against a world expert in some field I know nothing about? Stupid people ruin everything.
      - dang 1y ago
        Ok, but please do stop posting to HN about how stupid others are. Being smarter is your burden to bear.

tbrownaw 1y ago

And all of that takes, what, a week? As a one time thing?

jcynix 1y ago
Takes less than a day, because most of the stuff is scriptable. And for a simple compute node setup at Hetzner (I.e. no bare metal, but just a VM) it takes me less than half an hour.
- tbrownaw 1y ago
  But if you're that familiar with it, the overpriced turnkey stuff wouldn't look so tempting in the first place.

teekert 1y ago

I use NixOS and a lot of it is in a single file. I just saw some ansible coming by here, and although I have no experience with it, it looked a lot simpler than Nix (for someone from the old Linux world, like me… eventhough Nix is, looking through your eyelashes, just a pile of key/value pairs).

eru 1y ago
Nix is great, but it still requires some training and expertise. And the overlap between what Nix does and what the 'cloud' does for you is only partial. (Eg it can still make sense to use Nix in the cloud.)

bigstrat2003 1y ago

> It's fun the first time, but becomes an annoying faff when it has to be repeated constantly. Certainly true, but there are a whole lot of tools to automate those operations so that you aren't doing them constantly.

liqilin1567 1y ago
Mind sharing these tools and what each one does?
- c0balt 1y ago
  Ansible, Salt and Puppet are mostly industry standard. Those tools are commonly referred to as configuration management (systems). Ansible basically automates the workflow of: log in to X, do step X (if Y is not present). It has broad support for distros and OSes. It's mostly imperative and can be used like a glorified task runner. Salt let's you mostly declaratively describe the state of a system. It comes with a agent/central host system for distributing this configuration from the central host to the minions (push). Puppet is also declarative and also comes with an agent/central host system but uses a pull based approach. Specialized/ exotic options are also available, like mgmt or NixOS.
  - liqilin1567 1y ago
    Thanks, this is very detailed! Could you share some real-world use cases for these tools? Actually I am looking for tools to automate DevOps and security for self-hosting
    - indigo945 1y ago
      Salt and Puppet are useful for managing a fleet of servers running various applications, especially when you need to scale those applications horizontally or want geo-distribution. Ansible can also do that, on top of literally anything else you could want - network configuration, infrastructure automation, deployment pipelines, migrations, anything. As always, that flexibility can be a blessing or a curse, but I think Ansible manages it well because it's so KISS. RedHat's commercial Ansible Automation Platform gives you more power for when you need it, but you don't need it starting out.

tonyhart7 1y ago

"The irony is that self hosting is relatively simple" cloud is easy until is not, for 90% of us maybe we dont need a multi region with hot and cold storage for those that need it, its neccesary

lelanthran 1y ago

> It's fun the first time, but becomes an annoying faff when it has to be repeated constantly. I have to ask - do scripts not work for you? When I had to do this back in 2005 it was automated with 3 main steps: 1. A preseed (IIRC) debian installation disc (all the packages I needed where installed at install time), and 2. Which included a first-boot bash script that retrieved pre-compiled binaries from our internal ftp site, and 3. A final script that applied changes to the default config files and ran a small test to ensure everything started. Zero human interaction after powering a machine on with the disc in the drive. These days I would do it even better (system-d configs, Nix perhaps, text files (such as systemd units) can be retrieved automagically after boot, etc).

chickensong 1y ago
Your example only covers basic provisioning. The additional items mentioned by the parent comment can be a significant investment, both initially and over time.
- lelanthran 1y ago
  > Your example only covers basic provisioning. No. It covered setting up all the applications needed as well (nginx, monitoring agent, etc), installing keys/credentials. What did parent mention that can't be covered by the approach I used?
  - chickensong 1y ago
    I guess I read your comment as OS, the app, and configs, while the parent mentions auxiliary items, ending with "etc etc". The point is, all the extra things that aren't the app take knowledge and resources to set up and maintain. Sure you can script all the things into 3 steps, just like you can draw an owl with a couple circles.
    - lelanthran 1y ago
      > The point is, all the extra things that aren't the app take knowledge and resources to set up and maintain. Maintain, maybe. The setup for everything extra can scripted, and include a few packages I had to build from source myself because there was no binary download.