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by turtlebits 1612 days ago
This is cool, but are you doing this as learning experience? For a homelab it seems severely overkill. I understand it all being self-hosted, but it could be drastically simpler if you adopt a few SaaS products (using free-tier)
5 comments

Personally I dig it. I recently did something similar, and felt dirty not automating everything, every step of the way.

I knew I’d want to change the LAN architecture and the services, and everything; but it was definitely intended as a learning experience for me.

Kinda looking forward to doing it over again with my new/refreshed skillset. Automated everything.

(Repo owner here) Yes, I'm mostly doing this as a learning exercise; there's still a lot of work to be done before I can rely on it to host my services.

> For a homelab it seems severely overkill

Isn't that the point of homelab? ;)

> it could be drastically simpler if you adopt a few SaaS products (using free-tier)

For some people (including me), the risk involved in any SaaS product suddenly either dropping or imposing unworkable restrictions on free tier is high enough to make the extra work involved in self-hosting worth it. (Granted, my current self-hosting setup is a lot simpler than the one described in this article, but even if mine were more complex I would still say the same thing.)

I have mixed feelings. There is some over-complication, but I wouldn't call infrastructure without backups complete.
I've been burned too mamy times. Once a product realizes that x% of its free tier uses only feature X they suddenly put that feature behind a paywall. Now I"ve got to research and setup an alternative or pay 20$ for some minor convenice I set it up for.

Most free tiers requires a card on file. I shudder to think at having to check dozens or hundreds of such services regularly to make sure they have not sent out an email about how we are now charging you. Then I don't notice for 6 months and find out I spend $150 on something I could have setup myself in less than an hour that will never charge me.

I have had hundreds of such products subscribed at work. At least every year or so an entire day gets burnt updating credit card info from logging in and looking up the bespoke way every single site requires the updates to be done for payments.

The services that suddenly shut their doors and again require me to research and setup an alternative.

Services get acquired all the time then switch to pay only and they have your CC on file already for easy billing.