Disclaimer: I’m no expert on this.
I realized recently there are two common types of Self Hosters here.
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I work in IT and host some services for my employer so we don’t have to rely on the big tech companies, for economic or other reasons.
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I self host some services at home or on a VPS, as a hobby or for other reasons, but nobody pays me to do that.
The answers people provide seem to vary greatly based on whether the commenter is in the #1 or #2 camp. I myself have gotten answers along the lines of, “why aren’t you acting more like a paid IT person?” and it’s a little off-putting.
How to resolve this? Could we refer to one group or the other differently?
Maybe I’m making a bigger deal out of this than is warranted and I’m the only one confused?
If nothing else, I will call out my hobby status from now on when posting/commenting here.
Edited to add: TIL. I’ll use these terms carefully in the future. Thanks!
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- On-prem
- Self-hosting
And I’ll argue it’s on-prem even if you don’t have the physical server in your building
If you want some extra budget start calling it Private Cloud instead of on prem so when your bosses get calls about cloud strategies you can say we already do cloud and we don’t need their particular product.
Oh man, this is brilliant!
Why do you distinguish on premises from self hosting? If the server is in a server farm or in my basement, I’m still hosting myself my services.
From Wikipedia:
Self-hosting is the practice of running and maintaining a website or service using a private web server, instead of using a service outside of someone’s own control
A private web server is not defined by its location.
I’ll argue it’s on prem even if it’s hosted in azure behind a private v-net
I’d also split #2 further:
2a: Using a domestic DSL router and Synology NAS to run everything 2b: Has a Raspberry Pi (or 6) maybe a 2nd repurposed old PC and possibly an unmanaged switch 2c: Full height 19" rack, UPS, firewalls, managed switches, full virtualisation with SAN, redundancy and 100Gb full fibre internet
I’m somewhere between 2b and 2c
/j hey some of us only have 10GbE
Jokes aside, I get the classification. I’m pretty solidly in the category of 2c - more tech than some medium business but without the SLA to go with it.
Self refers to oneself as in, a person. I never associate selfhosting with a company which runs their own servers. Technically they do self host but is it a company asking questions on an online forum and referring to itself as oneself? Is a company a person? What is a company even? Philosophical questions we dont have time to discuss.
To me, self hosting means a person is self hosting things. Some have racks and use 1kW of power on idle, some have micro servers. In any case, just one paragraph explaining what you have at the top of a post is sufficient to get the point of what you know across.
Id say a more important distinction is persons who self host software only (VPS) and those who do hardware as well.
Ignore the host part. It has to do with the definition of self. Self can refer to a person but it also can refer to a group like a company.
However, in IT you will mostly see the term on prem.
This was my first thought. I’ve never said “self hosted” to a client and, honestly, never would. “On-prem” or “Running on your server.” The idea of a company “self hosting” something is literally just “hosting”.
This. Most app servers need to be isolated from the internet anyways so any license servers for activation or metrics or whatever needs to go on premises. Same thing with mail engines, is usually a few outgoing ports, heavily warded for the mail ip and everything behind all the opSec tools they can muster
Even AWS and GCP have on premises deployments were you basically create your own mini local region for banks and such
I myself have gotten answers along the lines of, “why aren’t you acting more like a paid IT person?” and it’s a little off-putting.
We’re all hobbyists (though some of us do it profesionally too). Wanting your service to be reliable is a fair assumption. If you don’t care if Jellyfin goes down while your girlfriend is trying to watch The Bachelor, or if you accidentally delete all your photos with no backups, then just say you accept that risk and nobody should give you a hard time.
… or if you accidentally delete all your photos with no backups
Ouch. (Yes, that was me)
As a #2 person, when my level-of-current-knowledge hits a ceiling and I ask for technical advice in forums or lemmy or even social media, it often comes from a #1 person.
Assuming its specialized knowledge few other #2 have.
Half the time I get an answer (about what and how) AND background explanation (giving context and WHY).
But half the other time a #1 doesnt realize easy things for them are hard for me. When they are miles ahead their answer assumes I have a host of other skills already in place. But I dont know what I don’t know so I dont ask for them.
But … every answer from a helpfull stranger is appreciated. Just bridging knowledge is hard.
I don’t think it’s really a big deal ?
We’re all playing around with things in the same domain. Does it really matter if someone is paid and someone else isn’t?
I don’t necessarily agree that a paid / qualified person will necessarily be operating at a higher level just generally than a hobbyist. Professionals tend to know lots about very specific things, hobbyists tend to invest a lot more time and effort into building elegant solutions.
Yes some answers from IT professionals may be unhelpful for hobbyists but that’s just part of interacting with other people.
For me self-hosted refers to #2. Many of us also have jobs that are either fully or partially related to #1, but I wouldn’t expect a #1 answer here. Questions here are usually directed to, and answered with, the #2 mentality.
Mine is definitely a hobby… possibly a borderline addiction. I am an IT person by day and then selfhost a bit at home. Most of my equipment is good old eBay specials (R720xd, R610), or just accumulated over the years (a few HP Microservers, RAID enclosures, etc).
The uptime is decent but my ISP isn’t great, plus one of the servers has been having issues so until I find a few hours to focus on it, it is not something I would consider “acting like a paid IT”.
Not to make myself sound like a bad IT person, but my homelab is held together with hope and scripts to recover when it goes down. One day I’ll cluster some lower power proxmox systems with portainer and ensure everything important has a way to fail over and backed up offsite (no, I’ll probably just take a nap if I get a free afternoon lol).
Sometimes people in these communities don’t realize how they come off, tone is hard over text, and I’m just as bad in person (thankfully I work remote most days).
but my homelab is held together with hope and scripts to recover when it goes down
That’s every IT guy. When I’m done with work, I’m sick of doing things right. If it works it’s fine. Where’s my duct tape
