I was installing Nextcloud and following a YouTube guide and the guy sets up his instance on linode. I just cannot wrap my head around this. Why would anyone pay that kind of money for such weak hardware? He’s paying $20 a month to self host his own cloud and only gets 2 CPUs, 4GB ram and 80GB storage! That’s totally bonkers to me! Does he also pay $50 for a slice of bread? And for what? To host his own cloud? iCloud 200GB is $10 a month lmao. So please, someone explain this to me Barney style why people are doing this instead of building their own. The only advantage is that is is probably far more reliable than hosting your own at home. Or maybe I am completely missing something or maybe I have a fundamental failure in my understanding
It all depends. First you dont have to get your own hardware. Sure some of us get stuff from work for free or have an old PC but even a 100 Buck PC is 5 Months with linode for example. Secondly, Linode is not the only option for example Netcup offers a VPS with 4c 16gb for 10-15 a month. So that seems a bit more fair IMO.
ANd theres other reasons. Like: You want to selfhost. But don’t get a public IP. Or your internet service being so bad that its not worth it. Which are all issues you don’t have with a VPS. Further Uptime. At home to keep a good uptime you would probably want to invest in a UPS and other hardware to eliviate problems. which further costs money which you could invest into a VPS.
And the Killer for me is Power Consumption. At 40-50ct/kwh running a PC of 60w costs me 300+ a Year, whereas a VPS at 15-20 costs me 240. And I get the benefit of lower latency and better bandwith and not needing to pay for extra Internet service.
So it depends. I do still selfhost stuff at home, why? not because Its cheaper, it actually isn’t but rather to gain experience with the hardware etc. But i do see that many people may not want to deal with that. So a VPS is defo a viable option.
Can you explain to me how you figure out your energy consumption?
I monitor/log it with a smart plug, or UPS.
At my home I have a shelly plug s Which is just a wallplug insert. That monitors consumption and can give it to you via MQTT, I port it to home assistant and monitor it. Usually my small HP mini node with a couple switches and Router is about 80w.
At my parrents I have a Shelly 1PM Plus, which is integrated in the path to the UPS. It monitores everything like the PoE Switch APs, Server etc as everything is connected to it thats IT. Its about 4.5kwh/day so about 220-240W. That gets also monitored via Home Assistant and MQTT. and 4.5khw/d are bout 2.5USD/day for me. So about 920USD/Year.
So Defo more expensive than a VPS would be. But also more custom and more of an Experience to gather.