<story><title>Reclaiming the lost art of Linux server administration</title><url>https://www.pietrorea.com/2022/01/28/reclaiming-the-lost-art-of-linux-server-administration/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>warent</author><text>When my SaaS app started scaling, I saw how badly cloud can be priced if you have even slightly unusual use-cases. It occurred to me that instead of spending ~$600&amp;#x2F;mo on GCP, I can invest in a $3000 PowerEdge server with much better hardware, run it out of my home office, and it pays for itself in less than a year.&lt;p&gt;Running your own server is an investment that doesn&amp;#x27;t make sense for everyone. If you can get it, it is better than you might imagine. Being in full control--the master of your own destiny--is so liberating and empowering. It feels the difference between constantly ordering Lyft&amp;#x2F;Uber&amp;#x2F;riding with friends, vs. owning your own car.&lt;p&gt;Not to mention, again, my hardware resources are so much better. This one server can run multiple profitable SaaS apps &amp;#x2F; businesses and still have room for experimental projects and market tests. Couldn&amp;#x27;t be happier with my decision to get off the cloud.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>deepspace</author><text>&amp;gt; I can invest in a $3000 PowerEdge server with much better hardware&lt;p&gt;And when some component of the server fails, your app is unavailable until you can repair it.  So you need another server for redundancy. And a load balancer.  And a UPS.  And a second internet connection.&lt;p&gt;If your app is at all critical, you need to replicate all of this at a disaster recovery site.  And buy&amp;#x2F;run&amp;#x2F;administer DR software.&lt;p&gt;And hardware has a limited lifespan, so the $3000 was never a one-time investment.&lt;p&gt;I think there is often still a case to be made for self-hosting but the numbers are not as rosy as they seem at first glance.</text></comment>
<story><title>Reclaiming the lost art of Linux server administration</title><url>https://www.pietrorea.com/2022/01/28/reclaiming-the-lost-art-of-linux-server-administration/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>warent</author><text>When my SaaS app started scaling, I saw how badly cloud can be priced if you have even slightly unusual use-cases. It occurred to me that instead of spending ~$600&amp;#x2F;mo on GCP, I can invest in a $3000 PowerEdge server with much better hardware, run it out of my home office, and it pays for itself in less than a year.&lt;p&gt;Running your own server is an investment that doesn&amp;#x27;t make sense for everyone. If you can get it, it is better than you might imagine. Being in full control--the master of your own destiny--is so liberating and empowering. It feels the difference between constantly ordering Lyft&amp;#x2F;Uber&amp;#x2F;riding with friends, vs. owning your own car.&lt;p&gt;Not to mention, again, my hardware resources are so much better. This one server can run multiple profitable SaaS apps &amp;#x2F; businesses and still have room for experimental projects and market tests. Couldn&amp;#x27;t be happier with my decision to get off the cloud.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>pmarreck</author><text>Does it have a backup schedule (and did you prove your restore process works)? Is it replicated to another physically-offsite location? Do you have to manage your own security keys? Load balancing? Multi region availability? How do you admin it remotely? Firewalled? Notifications of emergency situations like low disk space, downages, over-utilization of bandwidth, memory leakage, SMART warnings, etc.? What&amp;#x27;s your version upgrade strategy? What&amp;#x27;s your OS upgrade strategy? Failover? IPv6? VPN access? DMZ?&lt;p&gt;Basically, I think cloud provides a loooooot of details that you have to now take on yourself if you self-host (at least if you want to do it &amp;quot;legitimately and professionally&amp;quot; as a reliable service). It&amp;#x27;s not clearly a win-win.&lt;p&gt;That all said, I recently canceled my cloud9 dev account at amazon because the resources I needed were getting too expensive, and am self-hosting my new dev env in a VM and accessing it from anywhere via Tailscale, so that&amp;#x27;s been nice.</text></comment>