Hi, I'm looking for some recommendations, mostly looking for pointers of where to go and look at/research stuff as I have no idea what is good and what is just well advertised.
Intro: I have finally entered the world of (almost) Gigabit internet, which is opening up options with what I can host.
I currently have:
- Pi hole on an actual RP (will probably remain there because its easy)
- Inbound Wireguard VPN on my old router (will stop working when my old ISP stops service) EDIT: my new ISB gave me a router, but it doesn't have VPN functionality
- Foundry VTT that I run up on my gaming machine when needed
I will probably also be upgrading my gaming PC in the next few months, so my current rig will probably be put behind the TV to use as a server and for couch gaming.
Info/recommendations I would like:
- VPN software (I want to VPN INTO my network) My goto would be wireguard, is that still a good option? (I assume I just port forward the VPN ports to the server?)
- Private cloud/File server: I both want to be able to occasionally (but permamently) host files publicly, but still have the main store be available on the local network only. Is that going to be two pieces of software, or just one?
- Is a local video streaming app actually useful for a rare watcher of movies etc, or can they be streamed directly from the file server? its something that I see a lot of people talk about, but don't really understand why...
- Is Docker the way to go for everything? or just install on the machine directly?
- ~Piracy~ VM - Enabling the virtualisation stuff for Docker mostly breaks virtualbox (at least on windows) any recommendations for how to nicely run a VM alongside docker (if that's the recommendation)?
- Should/Could I be hosting anything else? Foundry will probably be on there. I don't feel like I have a use for smart home stuff, so home assistant wouldn't be much use etc.
That's some nice documentation - way overkill for what I need though.
Out of interest - Why is the VPS required, and why the mention of a non residential IP address? Could that not all be hosted locally if your ISP has given you a static IP address?
The VPS is required specially if you, like me, are behind CG-NAT with no way to escape from it. Using a VPS (or any other kind of server with a public IP). Using a VPS is the cheapest option...
residential IPs can be blocked for ports like 80, 443, 22 and the email ports in general (25, etc), using a non-residential IP could give a better experience. Moreover, even if not behind CG-NAT, having a public static and not-changing IP is a good advantage.
Everything is hosted locally! the VPS is only a tunnel between internet and the home server.
Advantage of a VPS over home server is uptime.
Also, it's on a higher quality, faster network (a lot of VPS providers use either 10Gbps or 40Gbps networking these days) and more reliable, newer, enterprise-grade hardware.
You can host it at home. Most IPs are not static but for some reason mine hasn’t changed in half a year. If it changes often you can use duckdns.
I'm paying for a static IP (and to get off cg-nat)
I just have a free oracle server that I use with wire guard to access my home server.
Aka oracle server acts as a public facing server that relays traffic to my server. Im behind a cgnat btw and it works fine.