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by evnix 335 days ago
I wish I had the time to do any of this. I could probably do it on a weekend but maintaining it, upgrading it to keep up with new releases would be something I wouldn't have time for.

I end up just paying a cloud provider and forget about it.

Anyone else on the same boat? What has been your approach?
3 comments
SomeoneOnTheWeb 335 days ago
Honestly, I self-host about a dozen services and upgrades take me less than a minute per month usually.

I simply have one folder per service, each folder contains a docker-compose stack and a storage directory. Updating is simply a matter of running `docker compose pull` and `docker compose up -d`. Nothing more.

Breaking updates requiring to tweak the config are very uncommon, and even when they happen it's only a few minutes of checking the updated config and applying it.

IMO this is the simplest way to self-host. No VM, no complex software install, nothing more than a simple Docker Compose setup that's fully automated.

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doubled112 335 days ago
That sounds similar to my setup, but each folder is a btrfs subvolume and my update script takes a snapshot before updating. I keep the Docker compose file together with the volumes in that subvolume.

If something breaks I can decide to figure out why, or revert.

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mirdaki 335 days ago
With previous setups, I was certainly guilt of not upgrading and doing the maintenance needed. That's one reason why I like using NixOS and ZFS. Both provide really easy rollback options. So all I need to do is run an update and rebuild. If things work, no more for me to do. If things don't, I can try debugging or just revert back to the previous release till I have time to

But also I think using a cloud provider is fine if you're happy with the experience. It is a time sink to get things setup and it's not zero maintenance time. It's reasonable to weight those costs

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beala 335 days ago
It's usually not a single weekend. If you're like me, it starts out with thinking it'd be nice to install Plex on an old gaming PC. A year later, it has organically grown into a rube goldberg machine of proxmox and home automation. Which I guess just reinforces your point.

Joking aside, a minimal setup just using docker compose is pretty manageable. Self hosting many projects is as easy as 'docker compose up -d', and upgrades are straightforward as others have pointed out.

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