Reject Convenience Forum

Over the last week I've been looking into renting a server from hetzner, with everything that has been going on globally I've been gradually trying to move my data and services that I use (were feasible) to alternatives that give more control over my data, and I found out about a lot of cool self hosted stuff like forgejo and nextcloud, but the problem is that I'd like to access these services outside of my own local network and I don't fancy opening a bunch of ports to the wide net (and don't have a fixed IP since it is a residential network), and perhaps most importantly don't currently own a machine that would be able to at least have two drives for redundant storage and is decently fast and power efficient.

And while searching online for options I stumbled across Hetzner dedicated servers, more specifically the AX41-NVMe, the price seems reasonable to me and being a full dedicated server means that I could in theory run a bunch of other services in it, like I could move my website from Cloudflare into it and gain a lot more flexibility, I also considered hosting my own Mastodon instance to be more conformable with sharing my pictures and thoughts in a place where I am mostly in control of my data and not bothered with hogging up space in someone else's server with huge photos. And I could also move my private Minecraft server there and host my temporary game servers in it too,

Again to me it seems like a good compromise between cost and control, for the monthly cost of that server it would take me 2 years to buy something comparable and that's not accounting electricity and internet cost, while also giving me full control of the software stack running on it. I would like to hear some opinions, experiences and suggestions when it comes to this type of thing since my only experience with self hosting is a couple of raspberry PIs and a jellyfin instance running on my personal PC.

That is quit the Powerful Box you are getting yourself for a Start.

If you want to move all your Stuff there, It is a reasonable Offer. But I would start maybe with a Shared vCPU server and a Storage Volume for Nextcloud Specifically and your Web server.
And get extra Boxes for stuff you only run on occasion. This makes you a bit more Flexible, is a bit less bang for the Buck, but you still get Cheaper as you might not need all that Performance.

For the Self Hosting Stuff, there are a lot of old Systems you can get from Recyclers or on Marketplace Services. And Places like ServerPatsDeals you might be able to acquire fairly Cheap Recertified Drives (they even come warranty).
Also with the Port thing, as long as only you and People very close to you need the Service you can Set up a VPN, some Routers include it as an option. But I also am a Fan of Tailscale which is easily Setup.

My Home Lab is my old Desktop with an i7-6700 with 16GB RAM and 2x 2TB Drives in RAID1. And it can easily Run a Nextcloud for 4 People, a Jellyfin, a Bitwarden, SSO solution, RSS Aggragator (FreshRSS), HomeAssistant and a Language Tool Server. It is a bit of Sweaty server, but It can handle that Workload. A Minecraft Server might be slow on it.

Crazyroostereye wrote: Sun Mar 02, 2025 10:03 pm That is quit the Powerful Box you are getting yourself for a Start.

I tend to go a bit overkill whenever making purchasing decisions

Crazyroostereye wrote: Sun Mar 02, 2025 10:03 pm If you want to move all your Stuff there, It is a reasonable Offer. But I would start maybe with a Shared vCPU server and a Storage Volume for Nextcloud Specifically and your Web server.
And get extra Boxes for stuff you only run on occasion. This makes you a bit more Flexible, is a bit less bang for the Buck, but you still get Cheaper as you might not need all that Performance.

I did take a look at those vCPU offers Hetzner has, and although they seem perfect for running a bunch of lower requirement services, or if I was spinning services up and down all the time, but specifically for the storage aspect it didn't seem to make much sense (at least for me), lets say I grabbed the cheapest option, the CX22 with 40GB of storage for 4.66€, that is very cheap, with an additional 100GB volume for 5.41€, 140GB might be enough for just me right now, but I would like to keep using it and also, since I manage the tech stuff for my parents, I would also like to move their stuff over there. and here is the problem, the next step to the volumes is the 500GB which would be plenty, but at 27.06€ is way more expensive per GB than the dedicated servers where not only it starts with two 512GB NVME drives (for redundancy so only 512GB usable) and I could add a 1TB SSD for 9.84€, so by adding two for redundancy it would still be cheaper, and even if I went with faster NVME drives it would still be cheaper (If I didn't care for redundancy it would be even cheaper), it is very unlikely that I need all the processing power of the full server (even though minecraft and openttd seem to be on the fairly heavy side when it comes to server processing requirements) but for being able to run all of the services in one machine and sharing on the cheaper storage it seems worth it to me the slightly higher upfront cost that I wont immediately benefit from. Maybe there are good reasons to not do this, and I'd be very happy to hear about them, I will still keep thinking about this for a while.

Crazyroostereye wrote: Sun Mar 02, 2025 10:03 pm For the Self Hosting Stuff, there are a lot of old Systems you can get from Recyclers or on Marketplace Services. And Places like ServerPatsDeals you might be able to acquire fairly Cheap Recertified Drives (they even come warranty).
Also with the Port thing, as long as only you and People very close to you need the Service you can Set up a VPN, some Routers include it as an option. But I also am a Fan of Tailscale which is easily Setup.

My Home Lab is my old Desktop with an i7-6700 with 16GB RAM and 2x 2TB Drives in RAID1. And it can easily Run a Nextcloud for 4 People, a Jellyfin, a Bitwarden, SSO solution, RSS Aggragator (FreshRSS), HomeAssistant and a Language Tool Server. It is a bit of Sweaty server, but It can handle that Workload. A Minecraft Server might be slow on it.

I also tried using my old PC as a local server, nothing too fancy, simple network storage, octoprint for my 3D printer and a Minecraft server, it was just a test that I ran for a while and it was struggling (and honestly not very power efficient since it is pretty old), so I replaced the octoprint part with a raspberry Pi and put everything else on various online services. I also got a used GPU for that old PC which is now serving as a light gaming machine/HTPC on my bedroom.

I am also pretty disappointed in the way that people and companies in my general area seem to operate when it comes to replacing their tech, they either let it sit and gather dust until it's so old only collectors could be interested (I have got an unfortunately non-functional Sun server and a Generic PC from the mid 90s that way), throw it into actual garbage that most likely ends up in land fills, or the few that ends up in "recycling" centers is scraped for metals and the parts that are not worth money are most likely either compacted or shredded.

Every once in a while I see a machine that looks promising but so far those always end up either being too expensive or too old and slow, if I scavenged around for long enough and on the right places I could probably build a respectable desktop and use that, but the time investment and risks of buying used parts with no warranty don't seem worth it to me. (And it doesn't help that I'm very picky when it comes to noise and the only place I would be able to put such a machine would be in my workshop/office where the constant noise from certain types of fans would drive me nuts).

Either way I'll keep an eye out for hardware on used marketplaces as I've been for the last year or so. Thank you for the links for ServerPartsDeals and Tailscale, I will keep those in mind for if I do find some machine that I like, right now I'm using cloudflare tunnels to be able to access my HomeAssistant from out of home (and even from home as I barely turn on Wi-Fi on my phone using mostly mobile data) but again I am trying to reduce my dependence on big tech companies and FRP seemed like a good replacement for it to me, I'll have to take a better look at Tailscale.