Hi there! This is a video that I made that I’m hoping can act as a beginner friendly entry level point to the world of self hosting and running a homelab. Just thought I’d share in case anyone is interested, and I hope it can be a resource to share with noobies. I don’t claim to be an expert at all so I’d also love some feedback. Thanks!
No, home servers aren’t made to be off the internet.
Well that was one idea mentioned by one of the other posters: better security by having the server off the network.
I think my luddite tastes in software are part of it, but if I have a server on the network, it might as well be in a data center where I don’t have to worry about space, power, noise, ICE raids (my servers are in several countries so they’d at least have more work to do), etc. I can add or delete new hardware with a few clicks. I actually do have an old Supermicro 1U server in my kitchen but it’s just sitting there unpowered. I had intended to colo it but it’s just not worth doing that. I had forgotten about it.
Even if I have a server at home, I probably want to back it up over the network, so then what? There are remote copies of the files then either way.
The benefit of having it at home on your hardware is that you have way more control, and it is on your local network so it can control local network stuff without going through the internet, while also being connected to the internet for things that are internet-requiring.
Yeah that is kind of vague though. I don’t really have other stuff on my LAN (https://biggaybunny.tumblr.com/post/166787080920/tech-enthusiasts-everything-in-my-house-is-wired) right now unless you count my phone.
I’m in another thread right now where a guy is running a simple encrypted chat server on his phone under tmux. That is pretty cool and using an old phone is an interesting alternative to a razzleberry pi if you don’t mind running Android and don’t need much compute or storage.
I think I see, you’re suggesting using a local server as sort of a jump box to the internet, with otherwise disconnected clients. I guess that has some attractions, though in practice I use web browsers all the time, with the usual bug-ridden software stack that surrounds such things. If I were doing anything really sensitive I wouldn’t use that approach.