I’m considering a business plan for people getting in to self-hosting. Essentially I sell you a Mikrotik router and a refurbished tiny x86 server. The idea is that the router plugs in to your home internet and the server into the router. Between the two they get the server able to handle incoming requests so that you can host services on the box and address them from the broader Internet.
The hypothesis is that $150 of equipment to avoid dozens of hours of software configuration is a worthwhile trade for some customers. I realize some people want to learn particular technologies and this is a bad fit for them. I think there are people out there that want the benefit of self-hosting, and may find it worth it to buy “self-hosting in a box”.
What do you think? Would this be a useful product for some people?
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Would only be worth it if you created a system for easily deploying applications on an already set up subnet with routing preconfigured.
Like set up a single server kubernetes distribution like microk8s or minikube on the server with metalLB and ingress already preconfigured on the server and router. You could also give instructions on how to install a GUI like Lens and how to use it to deploy a few things. Probably using workstation applications would be better than a web UI like Portainer to keep the server lighter, but either might work.
The tech savvy will just buy a Raspberry Pi and install yunohost on it.
Only if it didn’t have an insane markup for being pre-built.
I admire the thought of lowering the barrier to entry to start self-hosting for “normies”. Not sure where you are located, but where I am, this price point is not realistic even for used equipment, not including RAM or storage. I’m not really sure what value add you are bringing to the table that one wouldn’t get from just buying used hardware from an office surplus and if one is very inexperienced in self-hostong, looking into something like LTT is partnered with like Hexos.
A small home media server running off a raspberry pi could be that cheap.
this price point is not realistic even for used equipment, not including RAM or storage
I’m doing experiments currently on a refurbished Intel i5-6500 with 8Gb DDR4 and a 0.5Tb SSD. It’s tiny, quiet (~45 decibels) and so far runs ~8 watts idle, 25 watts normal usage. I haven’t stress-tested the power draw. The router I’m testing with is a Mikrotik hEX lite 5. That’s around ~$150, though clearly if you are accustomed to more “rack-mount” style homelab these will seem very modest.
What I’m testing for now is getting representative loads on the devices to see how they perform.
I’m not really sure what value add you are bringing to the table that one wouldn’t get from just buying used hardware from an office surplus and if one is very inexperienced in self-hostong, looking into something like LTT is partnered with like Hexos.
Oh, I totally agree, my value add just isn’t there if you are experienced at hosting. The value add is to help people get started, and to keep them running at a modest level. Not everyone wants to experiment with Kubernetes at home or train LLMs. Some folks just want a password manager, a shared calendar, something to organize their tax documents, a pihole, and a Minecraft server for their kids.
I don’t follow LTT, I was under the impression it was more hardware reviews for the experienced than tutorials to help people get started.
I’ve read a bit about Hexos, I’m thinking of some similar things, and it would make sense to work with them. I’m excited for their coming beta.
I recently upgraded my homelab/self-hosting server from an old Dell T410 with dual X5650’s (2 - 6 core/12 thread CPU) and 24 GB ram to an old Dell Optiplex (7020 I think) with an i5-4590 (4 core/4 thread) and 32 GB ram. Its barely enough for a proxmox host with 5 VMs; but way faster than the old T410.
If you are offering some sort of self-hosting box, would it be bundled with some sort of software for someone to easily spin up whatever services they want?
Are you going to be able to make money at the $150 mark with all this hardware and configuration? If you are targeting people who are new to self-hosting, it will need to be a complete package (will need to have ram and storage installed).
The hypothesis is that $150 of equipment to avoid dozens of hours of software configuration
OK fair try, but you also need to sell me 20-25 TB of disk space on 5 spindles (plus a SSD for the bootdisk), 64 GB RAM (with a chance to go up to 128) and the CPU must have 16 threads or more.
What kind of workload do you run that makes you confident you need that much hardware? Do you think people just beginning could get buy on 4 cores and 8 GB RAM for a while? How long before you think most people need more?
This will be the spec for my next server. The current one is smaller, and several years old
I have several different requirements for my server, for example, my son does video editing and needs lots of storage. I want to experiment with more VM’s and containers, therefore RAM and threads.
Do you think people just beginning could get buy on 4 cores and 8 GB RAM for a while?
For most people I think they just want to have some NAS and a reliable machine. But please grant them 16 GB, otherwise they would ask why their laptop has so much more than their server :-)
Dual Core ARM Cortex-A7 processor running at 1GHz
1GB DDR3 RAM memory
Doesn’t seem like you could self-host a whole lot with that…
It was ok at the time, and if it isn’t ok now, that means you want to run something that is too bloated for its own good.
Really though, special hardware for this doesn’t make too much sense. A raspberry pi with two ethernet interfaces would be great, but if you can live with ethernet plus wifi, the current rpi’s will do it. Otherwise there are lots of similar boards that really do have two ethernet.
I have not really felt much use for self hosted server hardware at home. I use VPS’s for that and it’s less hassle. Maybe it doesn’t count as completely self hosted, but conceptually it’s a miniature colo box.
Coming from someone who started selfhosting on a pi 2B (similar-ish specs), you’d be surprised. If you don’t need anything fast or fancy, that 1GB will go a long way, and plenty of selfhosted apps require very little CPU. The only real problem I faced was that all HTTPS-related network tasks were limited at ~3MB/s, as that is how fast my pi could encrypt the data (presumably, I just saw my webserver utilising the entire CPU and figured this was the most likely explanation)
I’m currently hosting like 5 vms on a proxmox host (mostly ubuntu vms- pihole, nextcloud, home assistant, etc), which is an i5 4590 with 32 gb ram and I’m running up against the limits of how much ram I can provision and if 2 or more of my vms are doing something intensive at the same time I’m pinning the CPU. I don’t think my use-case is that crazy for someone doing a little self-hosting.
Luxury! My homeserver has an i5 3470 with 6GB or RAM (yes, it’s a cursed 4+2 setup)! </badMontyPythonReference>
Interesting, I also run Nextcloud and pihole, and vaultwarden, jellyfin, paperless-ngx, gitea, vscode-server and a minecraft server (every now and then).
You’re right that such a system really does show its age, but only when doing multiple intensive tasks at the same time. I try not to backup my photos to Nextcloud while running minecraft, for example, as the imagine identification task pins my CPU at 100%. So yes, I agree, you’re probably not doing anything out of the ordinary on your setup.
The point I was trying to make still stands though, as that pi 2B could run more than I would’ve expected beforehand. I believe it once even ran jellyfin, a simple file server, samba, and a webserver with a simple HTML website. Jellyfin worked just fine, as long as the pi didn’t have to transcode (never got hardware transcoding to work).
It is funny that you should run out of memory, seeing as everything fits (albeit, just barely) on my machine in 1/5 the memory. Would de overhead of running VM’s account for such a large difference?
I’m running the recognize app on nextcloud which I think requires at least 4-5 GB RAM, so I have 6 dedicated to that VM. I’m pretty sure the recommendation for Ubuntu in general was 2 GB RAM so I gave my pihole half that. Home assistant wanted 4 GB, but I gave it 2. I think my Jellyfin server has like 6 and I have another VM with like 4. So that’s a total of like 19gb RAM provisioned. Plus I have a 2 TB zfs pool for my nextcloud VM. When I go into proxmox it tells me I’m using like 29.5 GB.
I suspect if someone was using docker or some other sort of containerization one could expect better performance than what I am getting with VMs.
Was my first impulse too, but looking at their app selection now, it seems kind of … inutile? Unsexy? Old?
150$ is rather ambitious for what you are describing as a custom made low power server. Managing to build something… Anything commercial out of new, hell even refurbished parts that has enough horse power to run anything more than a pihole/DNS server at this price point would be a challenge and a half. If you’re going refurbished/2nd hand, you’re likely gonna spend half of that on just shipping the parts to you.
I believe you are vastly underestimating the price of new low end parts and vastly overestimating the capabilities and availability of old micro servers. I’d say something like this would work at a price range of around 300~400$ (and even that’s ambitious imo).
And even then, that’s a NICHE audience you’d be targeting. It would be people who don’t wanna pay subscriptions, but also don’t wanna be bothered to spend a day or 2 figuring out how to set up a simple linux box on an old computer they have. I’m not saying that audience doesn’t exist, it’s just veeeeery niche.
Thanks, yeah, there’s a lot of work for us to do in testing hardware and understanding what a common workload (if such a thing exists) would need.
Do you have any particular evidence that causes you to think the audience would be niche or wouldn’t want to pay subscriptions? I can understand if this is just an opinion you hold, but if there’s data or experience behind it, that would be good to know.
Anecdotally, the majority of people I’ve seen who self host are doing it to replace subscription services. This ranges anywhere from piracy to libre office. So, they’re not gonna pay you a subscription for something they can do themselves.
The audience is niche because you’re aiming at a subset of a subset of a subset of people. You’re looking to sell this to someone who:
- Doesn’t want to pay for a service they can do by themself (self-hosters)
- Has the knowledge and desire to handle networking (no amount of preconfiguration will make them not have to set up which ports their services need while allowing freedom)
- But doesn’t have the time/energy to do it themself
- Can afford to shell out a rather large amount of money ($150 is a lot to many people, and as the other person brought up; you’ll likely end up selling it for much more than this after manufacturing costs)
- For a piece of equipment that is eclipsed by a 3 year old desktop computer from eBay
The amount of people who self host anything is already abysmally low - just look at the social media user count. There are more than twice as many people on r/pathofexile (which is already pretty niche) as on r/selfhosted. Obviously reddit isn’t the end-all be-all of representation in that way, but you can definitely get an idea of trends from it.
Well put. On top of the 5 points about the target audience above, in order to make a sale they also have to:
- Have heard of the product
- Decide to buy it (many will research competitive products)
- Spend the time to actually place the order
I would be happy if I could pay you to just set up and periodically check my setup. I only say that because I would probably want to put together something that cost more than $150. But I am absolutely overwhelmed by what I don’t know. Every tutorial I read gives me more questions than answers.
I just want to self host, share it with a close circle of friends, and keep everyone else’s noses out of my business.
Would you rather pay a higher price per single instance ($100 to fix something you broke on accident) or pay a lower constant price ($10-$20/month) like insurance?
Would you rather get help in the form of a conversation, a custom script someone wrote for you, or by giving admin access to the company to directly fix things?
I would be willing to pay an initial setup fee followed by some maintenance fee. I would expect the initial fee to be significant due to a custom setup/requirements. (I am talking just setup, not cost of hardware/ physical installation).
Unique home network with 2 managed switches.
Self hosted security DVR, automated computer backup, photo backup, network drive for document storage and then self hosting a Jellyfin server along with a torrent service.
(I am sweating just thinking about trying to set that up)
Storage will be a RAID setup where I can just upgrade by throwing a new drive into an open slot and replace (as necessary) existing drives by just swapping them out and server automatically handles the data management.
I have a VAGUE idea of what that takes
Maintenance would cover service calls to resolve problems due to security updates/patches, end of life upgrades, normal planned maintenance type of stuff.
User caused issues should be extra :) (i.e. I was just trying to install a Minecraft server)
Couple hundred bucks, at least, for setup. And that seems cheap.
I would pay $10-20 a month for a maintenance fee after an initial setup fee.
I would MUCH rather give my money to an individual sysadmin than a corporate megalith that will use my membership to force an arbitration clause to any future service of theirs I use. Fuck the mouse. Fuck em all. I tried to do it right and that still want enough for them.
I am absolutely overwhelmed by what I don’t know. Every tutorial I read gives me more questions than answers.
I felt that in the very core of my being.
Looking at my setup, sometimes I look back and wonder how tf I’ve made it this far. Dozens, if not hundreds, of hours of searching, reading, watching YouTube tutorials, and I feel like little has stuck with me. If the boot drive in my proxmox server takes a shit on me before I manage to figure out how to properly back everything up before that inevitable failure occurs, I’ll be back at square one (as in, still clueless and destined to spend dozens/hundreds of hours getting things set back up and configured).
I can say that I am a bit more familiar with the linux terminal now than I was a couple years ago when I first started, so there is some learning and growth taking place. But I’m still just a wee lad still trying to figure out how to simply stand up on my own. And heaven help me if an actual problem arises.
I’m probably an ideal candidate for something like this but I’d much rather have someone walk me through setting my own thing up, rather than them handing me a bunch of preconfigured stuff that leaves me just as clueless.
If it came bundled around a bunch of DIY guides explaining the hows and the whys, it’d be far more appealling
If it came bundled around a bunch of DIY guides explaining the hows and the whys, it’d be far more appealling
Interesting, so if you got hardware and it came with guides, what kind of guides would you want? I would assume something layered. At the top is just “I want to install these 5 apps and use them, I don’t care how it works” and in the middle is “I’m ready to SSH into the router and create some VLANs for fun” at the bottom is something like “I want to flash my own firmware with appropriate certificates for secure boot and my own root chain of trust on the server hardware”.
I could see this being a use case for a NixOS deployment where your company manages the configuration file and versioning of the system, as well as providing support. Over time, I’d you’re diligent about building documentation based off of each support request, you’ll end up with a personalized guide. And if your customer decides take a break or quit entirely, they have a configured system that doesn’t lock them in into something too esoteric.
Disclaimer: I only know of Nix, never used it because I just don’t manage that many machines to be worth my while to learn it.
The guides, basically a quick and dirty walkthrough on setting it up, hopefully a few explanations about things, and a handful of common troubleshooting tips. Also pointers to a handful of communities that have helpful info in case something obscure pops up.
Basically, teach a man how to fish, as opposed to giving him a couple.
I think a lot of people who would otherwise dabble with a DIY home server never try because it’s pretty technical (beyond typical ‘build a pc’ stuff) so I think the education that would come with the hardware would be appreciated by many. Help them get their foot in the door by making the dive a little less scary. Nothing too over the top but point them to the places where people hang out discussing the more technical crap for when that day comes
Hard agree. In fact, I think there’s a market for JUST the guides. It’s true that there’s a TON of guides out there already, from old blogs to YouTube, but the issue is: all of them start or end with: “your use case might differ, so perhaps this solution isn’t for you.” Or “make sure this setup is compatible with your specific hardware”
For example: I want to set up some sort of backup/cloud storage type system. Well there’s about 1400 ways to accomplish that. I can easily just grab one and go, but I’ll always wonder- should I have done this a different way? Would my life be easier/more secure if I chose a different set up?
So offering hardware that is compatible with whatever “stack” of services included would be a huge plus. Sorta like getting a raspberry pi and following a specific raspberry pi tutorial- you know the issues you get aren’t gonna be due to incompatibility.
I think it really boils down to the scale of one’s home lab- are you just tinkering to get some skills and make something cool? Or are you hoping to do something much much bigger? Different software solutions fit those extremes differently.
Sorry, got off rambling there. I guess I’ve been down the home lab hardware/software wormhole for too long these last few weeks.
Sorry, got off rambling there. I guess I’ve been down the home lab hardware/software wormhole for too long these last few weeks.
Not at all, I found your comment insightful. What you’re describing to me sounds more like a business of consulting with people rather than getting access to a knowledge base. One of the things I’m curious to learn is if there is a body of people out there that give up with self-hosting because they don’t want to learn everything, but just want to create something that works, and our resource are optimized for training professionals.
I’ve thought more on this yesterday, and I think my issue is-
I don’t want something that ‘just works’, I want to BUILD something that ‘just works’
The distinction is that I don’t want to buy premade solutions. I want to make them. Not because of the customizability, but because the fun is in the building. Think Lego- hundreds of people build the exact same product in the end, but why are they sold in pieces? Just assemble the damn things and sell them complete (with markup). You think more people wanna buy that?? I’d bet against it.
Hi, I’m your customer base.
I’m a complete novice, no network or coding experience, but not afraid of computers either. I’m pretty worried about messing up something serious due to lack of knowledge.
In the end, I didn’t choose Synology or the like due to:
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lack of robust community support. I’ve noodled around with Linux for years and learned that community support is essential.
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price. I’d pay 10% or 50% more for a good pre-configured system, but not 3-4x more (which is just the general feeling I get from Synology)
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lack of configurability. I’m still not sure what I would like to do (and be able). I know I want to replace some storage services, replace some streaming services, control my smart home, maaaaybe access my files remotely, and probably some other stuff. I may want to have email or a website in the future, but that’s not on my radar right now.
If there were some plug-and-play hardware/software solution that was still affordable and open, it would be a good choice for me.
I appreciate your thought process here! Where did you end up as far as self-hosting?
I’m currently about halfway through setting up a home server on an old/refurbished Dell PC. It has enough compute to transcode if needed, but no more. I’ll have to upgrade the storage to set up RAID. For software, I am running xubuntu, which offers the benefits of the great community and documentation of Ubuntu. It is very beginner friendly, but is a bit simpler and lighter than gnome. I’m running everything I can as Docker containers.
Nice. That’s similar to what I’m doing: Ubuntu LTS server running containers, orchestrated by Docker Compose, with a Traefik reverse proxy in front of everything. I’m curious about TrueNAS SCALE though, wondering if that would suit my needs.
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Market to tax funded institutions. If you can market “self hosted” as cheaper and easier than mother solutions you’ll have guaranteed clients for a long time.
That’s an interesting idea I hadn’t thought much about. I’ve been more focused on individuals than organizations. Do you have experience with tax-funded institutions? I assumed they generally have strict procurement rules and long support contracts with large established players by policy.
Their procurement policy is basically “has it been recommended? Is anyone else using it? Is it cheap?”
I work in public sector.
It would make more sense to sell a management service
If we did, would you be comfortable giving the company a root SSH login to manage your system, or would you prefer a more limited method of access?
Neither honestly. However, I am also not really the unskilled user trying to self host
Okay, fair enough, any thoughts on what a good ‘management service’ might look like?
Ansible honestly. You can use Ansible to report on facts. Outside of that you Aldo could use Telegraf+influxdb+grafana
No. People who want the benefit of self housing without worrying about hardware will rent a vps or something simpler. The hard part of hardware isn’t the purchase, it’s the maintenance.
Also, why the separate router?
People who want the benefit of self housing without worrying about hardware will rent a vps or something simpler.
That’s certainly an option. I think of dedicated hardware as working for several different people, some of which care a great deal about not using a VPS provider because they don’t trust them with their data, or don’t trust them to be around for a long time, or don’t trust them not to raise the prices.
The hard part of hardware isn’t the purchase, it’s the maintenance.
I’m inclined to agree, but I’ve been doing hardware for a long time as a hobbyist and I sometimes forget how far I’ve come. It sounds like you might be somewhat like me in that regard. I’m often surprised when people see assembling system parts and flashing an OS as a complex, inscrutable task.
What do you see as the hard part of maintenance? Scheduling time to do it? Unexpected errors or failures?
I agree with this. Self-hosting requires the user to understand their network, their software, how it all interacts.
If you provide a hardware product and call it a solution, people are going to expect a turn-key solution like a plug-and-play router.
You’re going to end up supporting a bunch of newbies who, by no fault of their own, can’t tell you an error code in the console let alone whatever UI you give them.
I think a better solution would be a course that walks newbies through self hosting.
I’d probably buy it.
Do you already have an idea of what kinds of things you’d want to run on it?
Honestly, not really. I’m just kind of at a point in my life where it’s something I’m thinking about looking into, and an out-of-the-box option like this would be really handy.
Which problem(s) are you trying to solve? The networking issue of firewalls and port forwarding? The admin tasks of installing and configuring applications? The task nobody does of maintaining software and keeping it up-to-date?
Which problem(s) are you trying to solve? The networking issue of firewalls and port forwarding?
Within the scope of this question, yes. Also properly configuring IPv6, though that’s just to achieve the same things that port forwarding enables.
The admin tasks of installing and configuring applications?
That’s also on my list, but I was trying to keep the question focused. Do you think the answer makes a difference? In other words, if it was just networking would it be not worth it, but networking and application management would make it worth it?
I don’t think the networking part is part that needs solving. Modern AP/routers are pretty easy to configure and setup securely. Dunno - I’m definitely not in the target audience for what you’re doing though.
