Please bear with me as I don’t know where else to ask.
I want to start to self host but do not know where to start. I would like to start small. Just something that might not be beneficial but to get my feet wet. It does not even have to be practical.
I am not tech illiterate and have my fair share of technology around me hut self hosting has always been a daunting task.
I am scared to start.
I am already using a PiHole at home but that was kind of plug and play and just worked.
I would be incredibly grateful if someone could guide me to some resource or tell me what an easy first step would be.
An FAQ or self hosting for dummies.
Most resources I found assumed some previous knowledge.
Louis Rossman, a strong advocate for the right to self-repair, has an extensive, bottom to top guide on self hosting your own services. It starts from introducing what a modem is and what role it plays, and it ends with an entirely self hosted cloud. It comes in article as well as 13 hour video form. I would highly recommend this to anyone looking to get started self hosting - it doesn’t just introduce software you should learn, but it also shows you how to configure it.
I will go even ONE step further than others - if you are scared to start a software like Truenas scale that has a GUI has helped me. A lot of the options offered by others are great but can require a lot of command line stuff. There are a few OS’s out there that are more point and click that I had a lot of success with. Truenas scale runs the docker containers that others are recommending.
A lot of people recommend Docker, but I will go further and say to specifically use Docker compose.
That way all the configuration is in a file that you can backup/restore. Updating is really easy, and you will never forget one of the random flags you need to set.
- PiHole - you can use the custom DNS to route domain names to you npm
- npm (Nginx proxy manager) - allows easy access to all your services hosted on one box
I agree, but want to add Portainer. Compose in Portainer takes away the scary SLI/Terminal part.
At least for me, hosting stuff went from «I have no idea what I’m doing» to «This sort of makes sense».
I’m honestly more scared of portainer than actually running compose from CLI 🤣
If you want to give Home Assistant a try like others are suggesting, save yourself some time and hassle and install Home Assistant OS in a virtual machine. While you absolutely can run it in Docker you lose out on some neat quality of life improvements like add ons (which, funnily enough, are Docker containers pre-configured to hook in HA).
What add-ons are you talking about? I run HA via Docker and I have full access to HACS.
HACS installs community integrations whereas addons are like external programs that hook in HA. You can do the same thing with HA in Docker by installing the addon containers separately and then hooking them in manually but HA OS makes it much simpler.
For example I’m running the Mosquitto broker, Z2M, a Visual Studio Code server, diyhue, and Music Assistant as addons.
Docco page about it is here: https://www.home-assistant.io/addons/
The easiest way to get started is using Docker. You can self-host most software using Docker straight from their Github with one command or copy-paste config.
Do NOT expose (Port forward/NAT) your services to the internet if you don’t know what you’re doing. Use it locally using IP:port. If you want to use your services remotely, use a VPN tunnel like Wireguard (Available on Android and iOS too). Modern routers already support it out of the box. Tailscale is also an option.
Later down the road when you start exposing services, I can recommend NPM as your proxy for easy host and certificate management. Expose as little as possible! For added security when exposing applications to the internet, expose your port using a VPS or Cloudflare and tunnel to your home using Tailscale or Wireguard.
To not get overwhelmed you should start small and improve as you go. You don’t need to start with a datacenter in your garage right away. The most important thing is that you have fun along the way :)
Great projects to get started:
This is really helpful. I’ve been wanting to get started, like OP, but knowing how to do it feels overwhelming.
Thanks!
Get Unraid for your server OS. Its nuts how good it is at being beginner friendly, while being robust when needed. It has a docker app “store”, as well as plugins, and a virtual machine manager as well. It also has a very, very nice Web GUI: you manage the server from another PC you use in your house.
I can not overstate how much I learned by starting with Unraid.
If you look up “Dr. Frankenstein Discord” you’ll find the community that helped me get familiar with Docker. As in, several people held my hands for about 2 weeks non-stop. I can’t tell you enough how much I love that group. But containers aren’t the only way to go.
I hear people talking about Proxmox a lot, and it seems (as far as I can tell) to be one of the easiest platforms for hosting many services one a machine. Next computer I set up, I’ll be going that route.
Regardless of how you do it, the knowledge base and skills mostly transfer like a Venn diagram. The most important pieces to get started are hardware and patience. Everything else can be solved with online teamwork
I will check out that community. Seems incredibly friendly and supporting!
Proxmox is something in my distant future but regardless. I will hopefully get there eventually
Having an environment like proxmox is very handy for learning and testing. When you find something to test, spin up a clean machine and you have a safe environment to learn that can be removed after. You can also try out different distros that way.
I’d recommend setting up Incus instead however, it works fine on a desktop/laptop if you’re running a linux distro they support and don’t have a dedicated machine to use.
They also have a very good tutorial/demo that shows the basics: https://linuxcontainers.org/incus/try-it/
