Self-hosting today is easier than it ever has been, and I’d recommend that everyone at least tries it. However, with so many options out there, and so much information, it is easy to make some mistakes that create such a bad experience that you stop entirely. These are some of my early mistakes that almost ended my interest in self-hosting.
Don’t try self-hosting on Windows
I first started self-hosting more than 15 years ago, I was dead-set on self-hosting as much as possible using a spare Windows PC that I had lying around.
Despite how great Windows 7 was as a desktop operating system, it just wasn’t suitable as a general-purpose self-hosting operating system. However, I wasn’t willing to venture out of my comfort zone and try a headless Linux server instead, so I spent way too many hours fighting to get things working properly instead of actually self-hosting anything.
After a huge amount of frustration, I finally took the leap and tried Linux only to find it was actually much more suited to self-hosting. I’ve never looked back.
There are some things you can host on Windows, but in general, stay away. Linux is easier, more stable, and has less resource overhead than Windows. Because it is so popular, Linux also has a lot more self-hosting documentation than Windows, making it easier to troubleshoot.
Do yourself a favor. Even if you’ve never used Linux before, take an hour or two to read about it and try it out for self-hosting.
Use a hypervisor
My initial jump to Linux was Ubuntu Server, which was an immediate improvement. However, as I added more services to my server, I quickly started running into a problem with conflicting packages and dependencies. One program needed version 2.1 of some library; another program needed version 3.1.
Trying to keep the conflicts down and the services running quickly became an enormous headache, until I tried a hypervisor called Proxmox.
Proxmox, like all hypervisors, allows you to quickly and easily create virtual machines and containers (a mini VM). In practice, that means you can separate your services onto different virtual machines so that they don’t interfere with each other, either directly or due to incompatible dependencies.
This is the only Linux distro I recommend for self-hosting
Proxmox makes self-hosting less risky and more approachable.
Today, on my Proxmox server I run more than a dozen services full-time, each in a separate virtual machine or container. Because they’re isolated, I can quickly shut down one service for an update without affecting any of the others, and if I make a mistake with one, none of the others will be affected.
A hypervisor isn’t strictly necessary, and I don’t always use one for everything I self-host, but it will definitely make your life easier most of the time. I’d recommend starting with Proxmox, since it is free, well-documented by the self-hosting community, and has a user-friendly web interface.
Don’t worry about buying the perfect server
If you check self-hosting communities on Reddit or Facebook, you’ll constantly find threads where people discuss what hardware they should buy or use. Inevitably, someone shows up talking about their full server rack full of professional-grade CPUs packed with ECC RAM.
If you’re just getting started, don’t worry about it. The best PC for homelabbing is the PC you can get without breaking the bank.
These days, I’d recommend trying to pick up a Windows PC that has been discarded because it doesn’t meet the requirements for Windows 11. My own home server is my old Windows 10 PC that couldn’t be upgraded to Windows 11 without jumping through some hoops.
Because almost every consumer PC made in the last 10 years has multiple cores and supports some kind of simultaneous multithreading (hyper-threading), you’ll be able to run game servers, media servers, web servers, and more without too much of an issue, even on a low-end device.
Don’t start with “mission-critical” services.
Self-hosting is a great way to save on subscription costs, but I’d strongly recommend starting with something low-stakes and simple, like a game or music server, as your first project.
There are a number of important things to learn about properly managing a self-hosted service, especially if you’re using a hypervisor. You do not want your first big mistake to be the accidental deletion of several years of photo backups. You want it to be a Minecraft server, or a small self-hosted dashboard—something easily replaced.
When I first started, I attempted to self-host everything all at once, which almost resulted in the loss of a few years of family photos because I made a mistake while using the rm command.
Not buying enough storage
In the debate about what PC you should buy or build for your home server, I’ve consistently found I run into one big problem: storage.
Between backups of your data, copies of the virtual machines themselves, ISOs of Linux distros and turnkey distros, you can very quickly burn through several hundred gigabytes of data.
Forget 4TB SSDs: You can get a 24TB hard drive for half the price
You don’t need an SSD for everything—you should buy a used hard drive instead
If I were going to spend extra on any one thing to add to my server when I was just starting, it would definitely be more storage. I’d recommend starting with a refurbished mechanical hard drive, since they’re an excellent value proposition and fast enough for most things you’ll want to self-host.
With the cost of subscriptions growing year by year, it makes sense to try and host as many of your own services as you can. If you make sure to create reliable backups for everything important even a critical failure won’t set you back much.
