if you could start again in your self hosting journey, what would you do differently? :)

That’s an excellent question.

If I were to start over, the first thing that I would do is start by learning the basics of networking and set up a freakin’ VPN! IMO exposing services to the public internet should be considered more of an advanced level task. When you don’t know what you don’t know, it’s risky and frankly unnecessary.

The lowest barrier to entry for a personal VPN, by far, is Tailscale. Automatic internal DNS and clients for nearly any device makes finding services on a dedicated machine really, really, easy. Look into putting tailscale right into the compose file so you automatically get an internal DNS records for a service rather than a whole machine.

From there, play around with more ownership (work) over what can touch your network. Switch from Tailscale’s “trusted” login to hosting your own Headscale instance. Add a PiHole or AdGuard exit node and set up your own internal DNS records.

Maybe even scrap the magic (someone else’s logic that may or may not be doing things you need) and go for a plain-Jane Wireguard setup.

If you want to program something, the closest you’re gonna get to programming is Ansible and Bash scripts.

You might want to get self hosting hardware like Synology or the like if you’re not ready to dig.

Otherwise here’s some things you need to know:

• Docker
  • Easy, consistent deployment of services in their own environments. Think a VM but with almost no overhead.
• Docker Compose
  • Run docker containers with consistent configuration in files.
  • Connect various containers to each other on the same or different networks.
  • Get multiple containers to start together and talk to each other.
• Systemd
  • Manage any service on Linux. If anything needs to start on boot, restart when crashed, start on timer, you want Systemd.
  • You can manage your docker compose containers lifecycle via Systemd.
• NGINX/Apache/Caddy
  • A web server for reverse proxy. You’d probably need one at some point, especially if you want HTTPS. Your services get hidden behind it.
• ZFS
  • Reliable redundant storage. You’ll need storage. Use ZFS with 2-disk redundancy.
  • Supports automatic snapshots for recovering from oopsies. E.g. deleted something or some software shat on your data.
  • Can use recertified disks from serverpartsdeals.
  • Can use USB disks or USB box with multiple disks. If you end up going the USB route, ask me for tested hardware.
• Backup system
  • Something to do backup. There are many options.
• Ansible
  • If you want to write code that describes your services and make them happen, you want Ansible. You write code (well YAML) and Ansible installs things, writes config files, sets up Systemd services, restarts things. It can be convenient especially if you have a lot of stuff and you want to be able to see all of your infrastructure in code in one place and be able to version it.
• Prometheus
  • Monitoring your stuff. Is my backup service running? If not send me an email.

Oh and use Debian or Ubuntu LTS.

Enough focus to read documentation.

That’s really it. If your purpose is just self hosting learning bash could also be helpful. And yeah Linux would be a great choice.

But mostly, if you want to self host an instance of Nextcloud correctly and without having to deal with too many unexpected things, you have to read the documentation and do not rush. Most self hosted stuff isn’t “install and use”, because you’ll be your own server manager, and everything requires attention to be managed.

Docker or not docker you will have to deal with configuration, settings, requirements and updates.

So understanding how to read the docs/search and open github issues and taking time to read everything would be the most important skill for me.

Also writing down what you are doing would indeed be helpful too, in order not to lose track of what you’re doing on your server. (Check out Ansible).

Most apps out there simply need you to know about permissions, systemctl services and package managers.

Try to always find a specific package for your distro for everything you install (eg. .deb for Debian), and have strategies when this is not possible (aka using a Python venv when installing python programs).

Persistence and reading comprehension.

There’s no need to learn Python or any programming language to self host stuff, you just need to be able to follow blog posts and run some Docker commands.

I’m a software dev and haven’t touched a single line of code on my NAS. Everything is docker compose and other config files.

I self host many services without any coding languages under my belt. I use Unraid because I found it user friendly for a newb like me. The most important skills I needed were good data backup habits just in case I messed something up, a willingness to read and learn, and the persistence to try more than once.

Docker really. If something goes bad, trash the container and start again without loosing your actual data.

You don’t need to be a programmer to selfhost.

The most important “skills” to have if you want to selfhost imo are:

• Basic Networking knowledge

• Basic Linux knowledge

• Basic docker/docker compose knowledge

But I’d say to not get lost in the papers and just jump right in. Imo, the best way to learn how to selfhost is to just… Do it. Most everything is free and fairly well documented

Learn how to properly backup your data in case you nuke something you shouldn’t

You don’t really need to know a specific language to self-host anything. But things like YAML, JSON, Docker, and some networking basic will go a long way.

If I could do anything different though, it would definitely be to write more documentation. Document the steps taking setting things up, log notes on when you have to fix something, archive webpages and videos that you used along the way. Currently doing that myself now after some time self-hosting.

Learning Linux is a great start.

Learning any coding language will help you understand a bit more about the programs will work, however there isn’t much need to actually learn a specific language unless you plan to add custom programs or scripts.

The general advice for email is don’t. It’s very risky to host and it’s a big target for spam. Plus there’s challenges getting the big companies to trust your domain.

However hosting things behind a VPN (or locally on your home network) can let you learn a lot about networking and firewalls without exposing yourself to much risk.

I have no direct experience with next cloud but I understand it can be hosted on Linux, you can buy a Synology NAS and run it in that, or use something like TrueNAS.

Personally my setup is on one physical server so I use Proxmox which lets me run 2 different Linux servers and trueNAS on one single computer through virtual machines. I like it because it lets me tinker with different stuff like home assistant and it won’t affect say my adblocker/VPN/reverse proxy. I also use Docker to run multiple services on one virtual machine without compatibility issues. If I started again, I’d probably have gotten bigger drives or invested in SSDs. My NAS is hard drives because of cost but it’s definitely hitting a limit when I need to pull a bunch of files. Super happy with wireguard-easy for VPN. I started with a proprietary version of openVPN on Oracle Linux and that was a mistake.

As others have said, you don’t need to know how to code, but you do need to be comfortable editing structured documents, so knowing a little programming does help.
Unfortunately, Nextcloud and email are two of the most difficult things to self-host. This is by reputation, I haven’t tried myself. Email is supposed to be particularly difficult and the usual advice is to not bother.
Jellyfin is pretty straight-forward as long as you don’t have a weird hardware decoding setup and as long as you don’t want remote access. If you do want remote access you need to use third party tools to do it securely. If it’s just for your own use then Tailscale makes it really easy. If you want to share with non-technical users it gets messy.

• Docker: You can practice on your main computer before complicating things with networking.
• How to set up a reverse proxy: DNS, certificates, etc. I recommend Caddy.
• Backups: If you use Docker Volumes, make sure you back those up too and test the backups.

To self-host, you do not need to know how to code.

I would caution against self hosting email long term. It’s fine for the educational value but there’s a lot of annoying obstacles you can encounter repeatedly even after everything is established.

the patience to read lots of documentation.

Documentation has been mentioned already, what I’d add to that is planning.

Start with a list of high-level objectives, as in “Need a way to save notes, ideas, documents, between multiple systems, including mobile devices”.

Then break that down to high-level requirements such as “Implement Joplin, and a sync solution”.

Those high-level requirements then spawn system requirements, such as Joplin needs X disk space, user accounts, etc.

Each of those branches out to technical requirements, which are single-line, single-task descriptions (you can skip this, it’s a nice-to-have):

“Create folder Joplin on server A”

“Set folder permissions XYZ on Joplin folder”

Think of it all as a tree, starting from your objectives. If you document it like this first, you won’t go doing something as you build that you won’t remember why you’re doing it, or make decisions on the fly that conflict with other objectives.