I’m already hosting pihole, but i know there’s so much great stuff out there! I want to find some useful things that I can get my hands on. Thanks!
Edit: Thanks all! I’ve got a lil homelab setup going now with Pihole, Jellyfin, Paperless ngx, Yacht and YT-DL. Going to be looking into it more tomorrow, this is so much fun!
Honestly? You already hit it. The pihole. Maybe a firewall/router so that they can switch away from the comcast “modem” to a small computer running opnsense and then either ubiquity or omada for easily upgraded wifi support.
For just about anything else? I would honestly say “no” to the “average joe”. Unless you are running a backup solution, it is just a liability. And a backup solution involves offsite backups of the important stuff. Just having a NAS is worse than worthless unless it is solely used for data you don’t want to keep at which point… why do you have it? Because hardware failures will happen and, unless you are regularly checking your dashboards, they will happen in rapid succession.
I agree that an “average joe” shouldn’t be selfhosting unless they firstly understand that they are responsible for their data and are making proper backups.
unless you are regularly checking your dashboards, they will happen in rapid succession
One thing I disagree with though, you shouldn’t be having to regularly check dashboards. And I understand this goes beyond the “average joe” realm of things, but you should have notifications setup to notify you if something is not working. Personally, I use SMTP to Telegram because almost every service has an email option for notifications, but I want to be notified instantly.
So when my healthchecks script runs and fails I’m instantly notified if one of my containers is down. If my snapraid scrub/sync fails to run or has errors or my borg backup script fails to run or has errors, I’m instantly notified of it. If my ddns script fails to update, again, I’m instantly notified of it. I’m even notified if the server has higher CPU load averages or RAM usage than expected of it, and of drive space running out, and of SMART failures. I’m even notified whenever a login to my OpenMediaVault dashboard occurs. My Omada Controller also has different network notifications, and so does HomeAssistant for different integrations.
Basically, I will be notified if any problems arise that need my attention… you shouldn’t be depending on scheduling your time to look at dashboards to ensure services are running properly. And if you setup a good notification system, you can just set and forget your services, mostly anyway.
I mean, that is just another way of checking your dashboards. So is just futzing around semi-regularly.
Unless you are dealing with a high availability setup, it matters a lot less whether you do a push/pull model for notifications so long as you are regularly checking then. The issue is when you have people who just buy a synology or a qnap, shove it in the attic for two years, and then realize they lost three drives AND are infected by ransomware.
I mean, that is just another way of checking your dashboards.
It’s not another way of checking dashboards… dashboards don’t even come into play for me with this notification system. If I get a notification that my backup script didn’t run, I’m dropping straight to an SSH session and checking logs and fixing it. There is no dashboard in this equation.
Unless you are dealing with a high availability setup, it matters a lot less whether you do a push/pull model for notifications so long as you are regularly checking then.
My home is not high availability, it’s just me and my wife, that doesn’t change the fact that this is a better solution over having to constantly check in on services. Also, high availability isn’t the reason for this, it’s having the peace of mind things are working, and doing literally nothing to know it. Right now, I know all my services are working, and how do I know? Because I haven’t received a notification that told me there is a problem so I know, everything is working. Do you know if all your services are working right now? No, not unless you actively check in on them right now. That’s the difference between my way and your way of doing it. I always know the status of my services, you don’t know unless you check in on them.
But listen, I’m not trying to persuade you, if you like to take time to check in and babysit your services to make sure everything is running correctly instead of setup a simple notification system, that’s your preference, but in my opinion it’s not the best way to do it. This is about working smarter instead of harder.
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Honestly? You already hit it. The pihole. Maybe a firewall/router so that they can switch away from the comcast “modem” to a small computer running opnsense and then either ubiquity or omada for easily upgraded wifi support.
For just about anything else? I would honestly say “no” to the “average joe”. Unless you are running a backup solution, it is just a liability. And a backup solution involves offsite backups of the important stuff. Just having a NAS is worse than worthless unless it is solely used for data you don’t want to keep at which point… why do you have it? Because hardware failures will happen and, unless you are regularly checking your dashboards, they will happen in rapid succession.
I agree that an “average joe” shouldn’t be selfhosting unless they firstly understand that they are responsible for their data and are making proper backups.
One thing I disagree with though, you shouldn’t be having to regularly check dashboards. And I understand this goes beyond the “average joe” realm of things, but you should have notifications setup to notify you if something is not working. Personally, I use SMTP to Telegram because almost every service has an email option for notifications, but I want to be notified instantly.
So when my healthchecks script runs and fails I’m instantly notified if one of my containers is down. If my snapraid scrub/sync fails to run or has errors or my borg backup script fails to run or has errors, I’m instantly notified of it. If my ddns script fails to update, again, I’m instantly notified of it. I’m even notified if the server has higher CPU load averages or RAM usage than expected of it, and of drive space running out, and of SMART failures. I’m even notified whenever a login to my OpenMediaVault dashboard occurs. My Omada Controller also has different network notifications, and so does HomeAssistant for different integrations.
Basically, I will be notified if any problems arise that need my attention… you shouldn’t be depending on scheduling your time to look at dashboards to ensure services are running properly. And if you setup a good notification system, you can just set and forget your services, mostly anyway.
I mean, that is just another way of checking your dashboards. So is just futzing around semi-regularly.
Unless you are dealing with a high availability setup, it matters a lot less whether you do a push/pull model for notifications so long as you are regularly checking then. The issue is when you have people who just buy a synology or a qnap, shove it in the attic for two years, and then realize they lost three drives AND are infected by ransomware.
It’s not another way of checking dashboards… dashboards don’t even come into play for me with this notification system. If I get a notification that my backup script didn’t run, I’m dropping straight to an SSH session and checking logs and fixing it. There is no dashboard in this equation.
My home is not high availability, it’s just me and my wife, that doesn’t change the fact that this is a better solution over having to constantly check in on services. Also, high availability isn’t the reason for this, it’s having the peace of mind things are working, and doing literally nothing to know it. Right now, I know all my services are working, and how do I know? Because I haven’t received a notification that told me there is a problem so I know, everything is working. Do you know if all your services are working right now? No, not unless you actively check in on them right now. That’s the difference between my way and your way of doing it. I always know the status of my services, you don’t know unless you check in on them.
But listen, I’m not trying to persuade you, if you like to take time to check in and babysit your services to make sure everything is running correctly instead of setup a simple notification system, that’s your preference, but in my opinion it’s not the best way to do it. This is about working smarter instead of harder.
I use uptime kuma for monitoring - really easy to set up and very versatile
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