VPS services, the pinnacle of freedom in the digital world! Nothing quite beats the thrill of entrusting your data and services to a mysterious cloud entity, all while relinquishing control over your hardware. And do not forget the joy of relying on a third-party cloud provider for your hosting needs, that may send you a 104K bill for your static site. Who needs to own their hardware anyway?
My new setup
For the past ~6 months, I have been relying on a VPS service from Ionos, which offers a decent service for it’s price plans, to host this site & my git server, as well as to occasionally port forward media services such as jellyfin using an ssh tunnel. This weekend, I opted to migrate to an old thinkpad that I had collecting dust plus cloudflare tunnel.
Cloudflare tunnel is ideal for securely connecting a self hosted web server to Cloudflare’s global network. But be aware that cloudflare can decrypt your traffic. I do not recommend using cloudflare tunnel to host sensitive information, or to share large media files.
To share media with friends, I use tailscale, I plan in the future to host headscale, a self hosted implementation of tailscale. Tailscale is a zero config VPN, you can add your family & friends to your account or just “funnel” content to a public address to give someone quick access.
Transition Tips
First of all, evaluate your current VPS usage and identify which services can be easily self hosted. I’d recommend to start slowly migrating your services to your own hardware & use ssh tunnel for port forwarding.
Test out cloudflare tunnel, tailscale and other similar services until you find the one you like the most.