Depends on what you want to self-host. In general, I would advise against self-hosting anything before you familiarise yourself with the basics of *nix, networking and cyber security.
You at least need to know enough to make sure that whatever you host is only available within your local network and is inaccessible from the outside.
Once that’s ensured, go nuts, experiment, learn, evolve.
In terms of how to start, really depends on your budget, what hardware you can spare, how much space you have at your place etc.
For the most basic playground it’s enough to have a raspberry pi or similar, or a very old laptop / desktop computer.
For something more swanky you can get old Dell servers (e.g. R420) online for around 100$ or so. They are quite power hungry though. Or you can get yourself a NUC and use that.
If all of this sounds like too much work, just get yourself QNAP / Synology NAS and see what it can do for you (it is way more limited in terms of options, but easier to setup and you can still have your Plex / file sharing / docker containers).
Instead of a Raspberry Pi you can look into used/refurbished Thin Clients which are way cheaper than a Pi at the moment.
I would strongly recommend to start experimenting in your local network too and not rent a VPS in the internet. There is a very high risk it will end up in someones botnet, if you don’t know what you’re doing.
For your local network, make sure to not forward any ports from the internet into your LAN and disable UPnP and the like. After that you should be pretty safe from direct attacks from the internet.
For more detailed tips you should tell, what you want to self host. Start small and learn along the way.
I know enough to have setup an ubuntu server with docker containers and servers on my local network, but except a minecraft server never exposed any kind of server to the web.
Depends on what you want to self-host. In general, I would advise against self-hosting anything before you familiarise yourself with the basics of *nix, networking and cyber security.
You at least need to know enough to make sure that whatever you host is only available within your local network and is inaccessible from the outside.
Once that’s ensured, go nuts, experiment, learn, evolve.
In terms of how to start, really depends on your budget, what hardware you can spare, how much space you have at your place etc.
For the most basic playground it’s enough to have a raspberry pi or similar, or a very old laptop / desktop computer.
For something more swanky you can get old Dell servers (e.g. R420) online for around 100$ or so. They are quite power hungry though. Or you can get yourself a NUC and use that.
If all of this sounds like too much work, just get yourself QNAP / Synology NAS and see what it can do for you (it is way more limited in terms of options, but easier to setup and you can still have your Plex / file sharing / docker containers).
Instead of a Raspberry Pi you can look into used/refurbished Thin Clients which are way cheaper than a Pi at the moment.
I would strongly recommend to start experimenting in your local network too and not rent a VPS in the internet. There is a very high risk it will end up in someones botnet, if you don’t know what you’re doing. For your local network, make sure to not forward any ports from the internet into your LAN and disable UPnP and the like. After that you should be pretty safe from direct attacks from the internet.
For more detailed tips you should tell, what you want to self host. Start small and learn along the way.
I would like to self host a lemmy instance.
I know enough to have setup an ubuntu server with docker containers and servers on my local network, but except a minecraft server never exposed any kind of server to the web.