home server alternatives

[Alan Silverstein]

I'm glad Bob mentioned linodes, because he set me up with one years ago, and it works great for me. I have silgro.com on it, now thanks to him also inbound and outbound email, etc. It's been reliable and simple. And it's very very cheap for my limited needs for memory... $7/month including backup!

On April 14, 2026 11:13:50 PM MDT, Bob Proulx <bob at proulx.com> wrote:
>Hi Steve,
>
>Steve Wolf wrote:
>> I figure my options at that point are colocation, dedicated (leased)
>> server, shared server, and cloud server.  Colocation is probably off
>> the table for cost reasons.
>
>How much disk space are you talking about?  Disk space is the main
>decision point.  If it is smaller than about 50GB then cloud hosting
>is simplest.  If it is larger than about 100GB then cloud hosting is
>prohibitive at some level of disk space.
>
>Because disk space is expensive for cloud providers.  It must be
>redundant to be reliable.  It must be backed up.
>
>If you can fit within the cost of a rented server then putting
>everything there is the easiest.  Then everything is very normal
>looking all around.
>
>> What are the advantages/disadvantages of the other options?  Which has the
>> most bang for the buck?  Are there other options  I haven't thought of?
>> Who are the best providers?
>
>You will require a static IP address.  Generally the typical thing to
>do is to rent a VPS/VM virtual private server / virtual machine from a
>cloud hosting provider.  This is a shared server cloud server.  They
>will supply you with a static address.  That satisfies your main
>problem.
>
>Daniel is talking about using a VPN to connect your home system on a
>dynamic address to the cloud server then use kernel routing to connect
>between them.  Daniel is talking FreeBSD and I am also running
>FreeBSD.  FreeBSD makes an excellent Internet facing server.
>
>Zak is talking almost the same but using GNU/Linux and xinetd to
>connect between the two.  I would do the same but using Nginx as a
>proxy instead of xinetd but basically the same thing.  I will channel
>Aaron and say that HAProxy is the best tool to connect them up.
>
>In all of those cases the cloud server has the public address and all
>of the disk space is located at your residence on a dynamic address.
>Then one of the many methods is used to connect between them.
>
>> Optimally, I'd like a solution that gives me most of what I currently have:
>> root access, multiple domain support, email support, MariaDB support...
>
>You always get root access when you rent a server.  I would always
>backup everything to my own backup because I have no trust.
>
>You can run anything you want to install so if you want MariaDB then
>install MariaDB.
>
>Email support means you must rent from a provider that polices their
>customers because those that don't are scorched earth neighbors and
>their entire network will be blocked by many.  Meaning that Linode is
>good.  But Digital Ocean is blocked for general abuse by many.  The
>best answer here is not to get attached because initially if you
>choose wrong you might have to move.  Which is easy to do.
>
>I don't understand your domains comment.  You can run ten thousand
>domains on your system if you want.  It's almost unrelated to the
>server.  It's really a question of do you have control of your domain
>name or not.  If you have control of it then you can point the DNS to
>anywhere you want.
>
>I am sure things will not yet be clear.  Ask more questions.
>
>Bob
>
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