For the past few years, I have self hosted services that permitted me to leave behind all subscriptions.
I have built out a system using off the shelf solutions for this which follows:
Why self host?
The thing that one should start any endeavour with is "why"?
For me, the reason is multifaceted. I want to have my own data in my own hands, even if that means taking responsibility for it. I want the privacy of knowing that everything is contained to my network, nobody has undue permissions to it, and the security that goes along with that. I want to not pay exorbitant money to some company for files that I want to potentially have forever.
Subscriptions are getting out of hand, in which you have media being pulled from one platform and put up on another, and you are in a situation which is no better than cable was all those years ago. I don't want to pay for mediocre television and movies that every studio is pushing out these days too, I care about the classics, but most stuff in the last ten years most of us would have been better off never consuming.
The learning that one does to get everything up and running is valuable, as well. You learn about docker, dev ops, networking, and much more, you learn how to be independent.
Hardware
The little box that could, my Thinkcentre m910q is perfectly adequate for hosting all of these services. You don't need an insanely powerful machine to do this; many people use old laptops running in their closet or small SBCs. Start with what you have on hand, and see how it goes. If you only have a desktop, you can run docker containers on it and just keep it running 24/7, though the power draw will be more than a mini PC.
I may upgrade it in the future, but for now, it handles everything very well. I have an external 4TB drive hooked up to it, and back it up every few days.
Homepage: Homepage
Downloads
Lidarr - Music
Radarr - Movies
Sonarr - Television
Lazy Librarian - Books
Prowlarr - Tracker/indexers
Downloading via
Qbittorrent with Gluetun VPN - Torrents and VPN
SABnzbd - Usenet
Media
Audiobooks and Podcasts: Audiobookshelf
Music: Plex with Plexamp Android frontend
Photos and Video: Immich
Books: Calibre-Web-Automated sent to Koreader clients on phone and Kobo
Pocket selfhosted alternative: Wallabag
Services
PaperlessNGX - PDF searching and storage, saving handwriting
Syncthing - Synchronization between machines, phone backup
PiHole - DNS for my network blocking ads and adult content
Microbin - Pastebin alternative
Nextcloud - Calendar (sent via org-caldav in emacs), contacts (synced from org) and some file storage
DAVX5 on Android for syncing
Forgejo - private git server
Tailscale
By using Tailscale to VPN into my infrastructure, we have set up a way to easily access any services from anywhere. I do not expose services to the internet and use the services as if I was local.
Set the server running pihole as the DNS server in tailscale settings
Backup
I Make sure all folders in my server and the containers I have created are backed up to an off site raspberry pi at my parents house, running syncthing and on the same tailscale network.
Conclusion
I think that the stack I have been running serves all my needs while keeping me away from subscription services, now if only I could get the discoverability of spotify for music..
What do you self host? Am I missing anything?
Post in the comments below or send me an email.
As always, God bless, and until next time.
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