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 $150 of equipment to avoid dozens of hours of software configuration is a worthwhile trade for some customers. I realize some people want to learn particular technologies and this is a bad fit for them. I think there are people out there that want the benefit of self-hosting, and may find it worth it to buy “self-hosting in a box”.
What do you think? Would this be a useful product for some people?
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What’s the value-add over just buying a SFF PC?
I assume “SFF PC” means “Small form-factor personal computer”.
The value add is not having to make a large number of technical decisions. IPv4 vs v6, which firewall rules to use, port-forwarding vs DMZ, flavor of Linux, partition scheme, filesystem type, application packaging system, and on and on. For many people they don’t care about these decisions, they want “to put something on the Internet” and do it safely. While safety isn’t a binary, and engineering is full of tradeoffs, an experienced practitioner can answer many of these questions reflexively and come out with good enough answers for some customers.
In the end the customer should be able to dig in and change whatever they want. But I want to see if flipping the decision dependency around will help. IE, start with stuff that works, then change things, rather than start with parts and make all the decisions before anything works.
Probably not much for people on a self hosting community, but those that want to get away from subscriptions and steal your data as a service cloud providers that might need some reassurance that they’ll have a working system.
How will you provide long term maintenance of their server for a one time payment of 150$?
How will you provide long term maintenance of their server for a one time payment of 150$?
My current thinking is the margin on the hardware would be intentionally low, essentially the cost of the hardware %+10 for configuring it a bit, installing NixOS, etc.
The business would survive on support and hosted services. Something like $20/month which gets you access to support to answer questions, help configure applications, troubleshoot issues, etc. Possibly rolling upgrades of your installed software on your behalf. Alerts on urgent security vulnerabilities. Could also handle tricky things like custom DNS (email servers, certificates) and off-site backups. I’m not totally sure what all would be included, but the goal is to make money while providing value, not build a garden or rent-seek.
So the problem with thin margins on the hardware side is what’s stopping a user from just installing their own OS once they figure out they can do the same thing you’re doing on the same hardware?
$20 per month would be enough to discourage me. It’s another relatively costly computer-related subscription and I already feel like I’m losing a battle to keep those minimal. There would have to be some very clear benefits for that price.
There would have to be some very clear benefits for that price.
Agreed, it would need to be very clear, and additionally we’d need to plan that a certain percentage of customers would grow out of a basic support offering, either by becoming experts or by growing their install size and complexity.
$20 per month would be enough to discourage me. It’s another relatively costly computer-related subscription and I already feel like I’m losing a battle to keep those minimal.
Understandable. Is there a price you think would be reasonable? What would you want for that price?
Raspberry pi was able to do it with $35.
Raspberry Pi is not a server. That people use it as one does not mean it’s fit for purpose.
The fact that it’s an option that even remotely works is my point. They sell hardware. They don’t support software. The community does that. There is something to be gained from having a uniform platform for learning self hosting responsibly.
A Raspberry pi isn’t particularly great at any one thing. It’s greatest strength comes in bundling everything you need in a box at an affordable price. Once you know where your pain points are then you can build/design a system that overcomes those shortcomings.
Having a starter kit would be an easy way to get more people in the space. Would it cost $35 of course not. Level1Techs made their KVM to meet their own requirements and then the community benefits. To me, this project has that kind of energy. Or at least the potential for it.
While true I feel like your comment misses the point. A raspberry pi is just a computer, not a magic solution box that’s kept maintained and updated by some guy. Their product isn’t a service, it’s just the device.
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.
Why would I need a separate router for that? I’d need to configure the main router anyway.
I would absolutely want the extra router because most people have one from their service provider. For self hosting, you want an additional router with your own software.
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.
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?
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?
I probably would. However it has become increasingly obvious that the flaws with solutions so far have been in the organisation. Not so much the particular hardware or software. If I’m going to buy something I’d like some hope that it’ll be there in 5 or 10 or 20 years. So please if you go serious with this, look into worker-owned organizations because I’m tired of dodging profit-maximizing traps and pretend-non-profit landmines. If the people building and supporting the thing aren’t the ones deciding what to do with the revenue and profit, you’re the only one doing it and you’re going to make mistakes that will hurt them and us. And then you become a landmine to dodge.
These are great points, and I fully agree. I’d be interested in knowing what kind of license or corporate structure or contract would give you confidence that the organization is worth investing in. I could put all the software out with a really strong Affero license so that you’ve got the source code, but I get the impression that you, like me, want more than that. Corporations like Mondragon are interesting to me, and I’m aware of a few different tech cooperative organizations. I’m not confident that a cooperative structure alone is enough. Yes, it helps avoid the company taking VC money, shooting for the moon, failing, and then selling everything that’s not clearly legally radioactive. But it doesn’t protect you against more insidious forces like the founders selling to private capital and adjusting the EULA every few months until they have the right to sell off your baby photos.
I’ve been batting around the idea of creating a compliment to the “end-user license agreement” - the “originating company license agreement”. Something like a poison pill that forces the company to pay out to customers in the event of a data breach, sale of customer data, or other events that a would-be acquirer may think is worth it for them.
I’m just not sure yet what kinds of controls would be strong enough to convince people who have been burned by this sort of thing in the past. What do you think?
I don’t know enough to say what the structure should be but this should not be possible:
But it doesn’t protect you against more insidious forces like the founders selling to private capital
It implies that the founders have more voting power and ownership than the rest of the people in the org. In my mind, everyone should have an equal vote, which should prevent a sale on the whim of the founders or another minority group. If a sale is in the cards, a majority of the people in the org should have to approve for it to proceed. And this shouldn’t be advisory but a legal barrier to pass.
If I were to start a firm today, I’d be looking into this because not only this is the kind of firm I’d like to work in, but I think so would quite a few people in software. And those aren’t the dumb kids.
I can also say that as a customer, the few worker co-ops I’ve able to buy things from give me a much more trustworthy impression than the baseline. They just behave differently. Noticeably more ethically.
But it doesn’t protect you against more insidious forces like the founders selling to private capital
It implies that the founders have more voting power and ownership than the rest of the people in the org. In my mind, everyone should have an equal vote, which should prevent a sale on the whim of the founders or another minority group.
I’m not confident that simple democracy is enough. While I do expect that a one-worker-one-vote system would make it harder to sell out, it’s still possible. I do think that a cooperative has many benefits. I just want to make it fatal to the business to go down certain dark paths: selling user data, seller user compute, selling user attention, etc.
I wish there were more examples of functional high-tech cooperatives I could learn lessons from.
If I were to start a firm today, I’d be looking into this because not only this is the kind of firm I’d like to work in, but I think so would quite a few people in software. And those aren’t the dumb kids.
I strongly agree with this sentiment.
Oooohhhhh boy. Another one of these 🤣
It’s not like a package thing you can sell if you’re not supporting it. Then your just selling hardware at an inflated price. It’s not even self-hosting at that point. Why wouldn’t you just pay a regular company for a product?
Good point, I should have mentioned the plan is to sell support.
Then I’m not sure what the product you’re selling is though. Tech Support? That’s going to be a hard sell.
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
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.
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”.
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
I think this needs to exist, but as a community supported system, not as a commercial product.
Pick a set of open technologies - but not the best, lightest weight, just pick something open.
Come up with a security architecture that’s reasonably safe and only adds a moderate amount of extra annoyance, and build out a really generic “self-hosted web hosting and VM company-like thingy” system people can rally around.
Biggest threat to this, I think, is that this isn’t the 90s and early 2000s any longer, and for a big project like this, most of the oxygen has been sucked out already by free commercial offerings like Facebook. The technical family friend offering to self-host email or forums or chat no longer gets gratitude and love, they get “why not Facebook?”
So… small group effort, resistant to bad actors joining the project to kill it, producing a good design with reasonably safe security architecture, that people can install step by step, and have fun using while they build and learn it.
I think a possibility is a series of open source anvil or nixos scripts that you can run on most hardware with minimal changes, in an extendable architecture of some kind to add or remove functionality and they perhaps get maintained by the community or some structure of the kind of Linux distributions.
This could enable people with minimal skills set up and maintain a reasonably useful but secure environment just by changing a few variables.
nixos scripts
What’s a nixos script?
Nixos is an os that’s defined by its config stored in .nix files. Everything is defined here all the software and configurations. Two people with the same script will have the exact same os.
Any changes you make that aren’t in the scripts won’t be present when you reboot.
You could maintain a very custom linux distribution (kinda) by just maintaining these config scripts.
So a user wouldn’t need to install all required software and dependencies. They could get a nixos and the self-host config and adjust some settings and have a working system straight after install.
We already have that, the first problem is we have like a dozen of them, a few are even well supported. The second problem is that usually the technical knowledge required to set up the systems are still lower than the technical knowledge required to keep it running.
I’ve been struggling to wrap my head around a good security architecture for my mspencer.net replacement crap. Could I bug you for links?
I figured out a while ago to keep VM host management on a management VLAN, and I put each service VM on its own VLAN with heavy, service-specific firewalling and a private OS update repo mirror - but after hearing about ESXi jackpotting vulns and Broadcom shenanigans, I’ve gotten really disheartened. I’d love some safe defaults.
It sounds like you’re getting into the keeping it running phase.
First, going back to your previous comment, self-hosting email is difficult. It’s not hard for a small provider to end up blacklisted and you’re probably kind of just done at that point and it will feel very unfair. I get that it’s a fun set of technical challenges, but you couldn’t pay me enough to help someone self-host email.
Second, guessing, but it sounds like you may be trying to expose your services directly and doing a lot to make that work which goes against what most would recommend for hosting your own services. Big companies don’t expose their intranet like that, follow their example. Almost every guide or system is going to warn against that. If you’re going to host more than one thing, highly recommend focusing on minimizing entry points and looking into a VPN-like solution for accessing most if not all of your services. Still spend time on securing your intranet, but most of your risk is going to come from how hard it is for people to get past the front door (or doors).
I think this needs to exist, but as a community supported system, not as a commercial product. … The technical family friend offering to self-host email or forums or chat no longer gets gratitude and love, they get “why not Facebook?”
I think this is a great point, it doesn’t help much to create a business that ends up with the same incentives and the same end-game as the existing systems.
So… small group effort, resistant to bad actors joining the project to kill it, producing a good design with reasonably safe security architecture, that people can install step by step, and have fun using while they build and learn it.
That is precisely what I’m looking to build. I don’t want to get rich, I want people without 10 years of industry experience to get some of the benefits we have all been able to build for ourselves.
What is the aim? People who want to get into it, but does not know how, or experts? Think half of the attraction of selfhosting is the diy aspect.
What extra would this bring if people can just buy the parts cheaper?
And for those who only want the out of the box experience why would this be better than, let’s say a beestation? (Yeah price, I know, but you obviously would not have the same support level.)
What is the aim? People who want to get into it, but does not know how, or experts? Think half of the attraction of selfhosting is the diy aspect.
I don’t disagree, and I would imagine what I’m offering would only be useful to people who are very early and don’t yet know they enjoy the DIY aspect.
The aim, though, is this: I’ve enjoyed self-hosting. It’s given me some powers that most people don’t get to have who aren’t also technical professionals. I’m also deeply frustrated by the environment created by the various major tech companies. If I can, I’d like to lower the barrier for people to get some of those powers without having to become experts and to make it more feasible for them to do what they want to do, rather than just what they are permitted to do.
What extra would this bring if people can just buy the parts cheaper?
Much shorter time going from “how can I control some of my own data” to "I’m running NextCloud, and its kinda like iCloud/Google Drive/Whatever Microsoft does and it’s running right here under my control! Not everyone knows the path from buying parts online to having a working reverse-proxy and reasonable firewall rules. Also, standardization makes it much easier to support people, which is really what the business would be doing.
why would this be better than, let’s say a beestation?
I knew about Synology, but as a NAS product, which assumes a certain familiarity with backup schemes, etc. Kind of a prosumer-only thing. The Beestation is new to me, thanks for the tip. Quite possible what I’m proposing would have some overlap and compete with it, I’ll have to read up on it.
The tech savvy will just buy a Raspberry Pi and install yunohost on it.
Was my first impulse too, but looking at their app selection now, it seems kind of … inutile? Unsexy? Old?
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…
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?
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.
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?
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.
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.
