this post was submitted on 14 Oct 2023
43 points (90.6% liked)

Selfhosted

40696 readers
320 users here now

A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.

Rules:

  1. Be civil: we're here to support and learn from one another. Insults won't be tolerated. Flame wars are frowned upon.

  2. No spam posting.

  3. Posts have to be centered around self-hosting. There are other communities for discussing hardware or home computing. If it's not obvious why your post topic revolves around selfhosting, please include details to make it clear.

  4. Don't duplicate the full text of your blog or github here. Just post the link for folks to click.

  5. Submission headline should match the article title (don’t cherry-pick information from the title to fit your agenda).

  6. No trolling.

Resources:

Any issues on the community? Report it using the report flag.

Questions? DM the mods!

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Is it a bad idea to use my desktop to self host?

What are the disadvantages?? Can they be overcome?

I use it primarily for programming, sometimes gaming and browsing.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

I would not recommend using your primary desktop for self hosting. If you just absolutely have to, install Virtual Box or some other hypervisor solution and run your servers in separate VM's.

Use a dedicated host. It can be a desktop, server, Raspberry Pi, etc. Depending on your needs. Sooner or later you'll find that hosting on a workstation that you use for other things is horribly inconvenient. Depending on what you're self hosting, it can consume lots of resources. If you become dependent on the services you're hosting, which is the point of self hosting to begin with, even really small things like rebooting your workstation can become really inconvenient.

I've got an old Dell PowerEdge ticking away in my basement that runs all my VM's. I can reboot my desktop without interrupting any of my self hosted services. It also makes it easier to back up my VM's and I can easily spin up a new one if needed. You have to be careful if you use server hardware though. The T430 that I have is pretty efficient but some servers can be thirsty little space heaters.