Don't sell space in your homelab (2023)(grumpy.systems)
grumpy.systems
Don't sell space in your homelab (2023)
https://grumpy.systems/2023/please-dont-sell-space-in-your-homelab/
109 comments
I have some friends with Nextcloud accounts that run on my home server, and a couple have accounts on my Matrix home server.
They understand that if anything goes wrong I will offer a complete refund (which is $0), because they’re my friends. I couldn’t imagine doing it for other people though.
It also helps that they’re IT or at least interested in IT.
They understand that if anything goes wrong I will offer a complete refund (which is $0), because they’re my friends. I couldn’t imagine doing it for other people though.
It also helps that they’re IT or at least interested in IT.
My friends have offered to pay for some of the hard drives, but I refuse because once I accept money, there's an implicit owing them to keep it up (whether that's real or in my head). Now it's just a best effort, and I prefer that over a couple hundred bucks.
Just getting people to pay their domain fees on time (or at all) was a nightmare back then - so nowadays there's only one deal on infrastructure I own:
It's free and comes with no guarantees. If you need a domain or subdomain, you own it, pay for it, and just put a DNS record to the IP I tell you.
It's free and comes with no guarantees. If you need a domain or subdomain, you own it, pay for it, and just put a DNS record to the IP I tell you.
It's less about coming back to a "home", and more about self-hosting.
Self-hosting a service, website, or SaaS happens alot more than most people realize especially with fibre to the home, and even things like Starlink.
Sharing your home services doesn't seem mission critical, unless it is. It's easy to just pop in a QNAP or Synology for any individual for themselves.
Businesses who have data residency and processing requirements are live and well, and pay a premium.
The pendulum of cloud vs local is starting to swing the more AI models become available in datacentres to keep close to your data in 2025. Google just announced privately hosting to Gemini a few days ago iirc.
For self-hosting, one has to stabilize power, internet, and decide on equipment. This is orders of magnitude more doable, easier and cheaper every 5 years going back 15.
Just have to be clear on how experienced you are with this in the past and most recently. The cloud is ridiculously profitable and overpriced because in part of how much this has come down market just not used.
Of course there's knowledge involved, and again, there's plenty of people who quietly have this knowledge, and it's far easier to obtain now starting with something as simple as Proxmox and/or Docker.
Self-hosting a service, website, or SaaS happens alot more than most people realize especially with fibre to the home, and even things like Starlink.
Sharing your home services doesn't seem mission critical, unless it is. It's easy to just pop in a QNAP or Synology for any individual for themselves.
Businesses who have data residency and processing requirements are live and well, and pay a premium.
The pendulum of cloud vs local is starting to swing the more AI models become available in datacentres to keep close to your data in 2025. Google just announced privately hosting to Gemini a few days ago iirc.
For self-hosting, one has to stabilize power, internet, and decide on equipment. This is orders of magnitude more doable, easier and cheaper every 5 years going back 15.
Just have to be clear on how experienced you are with this in the past and most recently. The cloud is ridiculously profitable and overpriced because in part of how much this has come down market just not used.
Of course there's knowledge involved, and again, there's plenty of people who quietly have this knowledge, and it's far easier to obtain now starting with something as simple as Proxmox and/or Docker.
I know of a few "serious" businesses doing this to scrape sites (mostly pricing data) via consumer IP blocks.
You can get residential proxies as an alternative, but it's pretty expensive.
Damnit I didn't even knew this existed with such insane pricing.
"Residential proxies is based on traffic and purchase model. Pay as you go model starts at $7.35 per GB, and can be discounted as low as $1.84 per GB when purchased in bulk."
"Residential proxies is based on traffic and purchase model. Pay as you go model starts at $7.35 per GB, and can be discounted as low as $1.84 per GB when purchased in bulk."
Yeah but if you’re just scraping it’s only a kb or 2 per request. Once or twice a day to check the price of an item would let you track thousands of items for years for just 8$
Depends on the site. Some sites are sending down several megabytes of Javascript or images per request. Some sites even send down massive JSON payloads to page through instead of doing it iteratively.
Exactly. Or if you decide just to scrape whole thing with headless browsers. It would be ridicilously expensive.
But I would guess this type of proxies is mostly use to send data rather than receive. You can access geo-locked sites through standard vpn.
But I would guess this type of proxies is mostly use to send data rather than receive. You can access geo-locked sites through standard vpn.
It’s not really that expensive, I guess it depends on your use case but it’s only like $4/GB (edit: misleading, see replies): https://oxylabs.io/products/residential-proxy-pool or https://brightdata.com/proxy-types/residential-proxies
Usually you only need some subset of the data per page load if you invest some time looking at dev tools you can probably find the API call you need and save yourself a few MB.
They all offer scraping APIs now too that can be cheaper for certain use cases where you only need a subset of the data that is actually loaded. Like $1.3 per 1k requests: https://oxylabs.io/products/scraper-api/web/pricing or $1 per 1k: https://brightdata.com/pricing/web-scraper
Usually you only need some subset of the data per page load if you invest some time looking at dev tools you can probably find the API call you need and save yourself a few MB.
They all offer scraping APIs now too that can be cheaper for certain use cases where you only need a subset of the data that is actually loaded. Like $1.3 per 1k requests: https://oxylabs.io/products/scraper-api/web/pricing or $1 per 1k: https://brightdata.com/pricing/web-scraper
Providers like Oxylabs can be quite restrictive, preventing access to many of the common sites that scrapers choose to target.
https://faq.oxylabs.info/en/articles/8826164-restricted-targ...
Additionally I believe that $4/GB is an introductory price. When I went into the Oxylab dashboard, it showed me $8.
https://faq.oxylabs.info/en/articles/8826164-restricted-targ...
Additionally I believe that $4/GB is an introductory price. When I went into the Oxylab dashboard, it showed me $8.
Hmm that’s unfortunate. I’m actually scaling up a data journalism project this month which is why I’ve been looking at these.
I’m curious if you can suggest a happy medium between curl-impersonate on VPS (dirt cheap) vs residential proxy ($8/gb)?
Personally I’m not trying to hit any of those common sites.
I’m curious if you can suggest a happy medium between curl-impersonate on VPS (dirt cheap) vs residential proxy ($8/gb)?
Personally I’m not trying to hit any of those common sites.
>Providers like Oxylabs can be quite restrictive, preventing access to many of the common sites that scrapers choose to target.
Most of them seem pretty reasonable?
"Entertainment & streaming" - who's trying to scrape netflix's library?
"Banking and other financial institutions" / "Government websites" / "Mailing" - seems far more likely it'll be used for credential stuffing than for "scraping".
"Ticketing" - seems far more likely that it'll get used by scalpers than for scraping
The main targets of scraping - e-commerce sites (for price comparisons) and social media networks (for user generated content) are fine to scrape. Is there some use case I'm missing here? Is there a huge contingent of people wanting to scrape ticketmaster or bank of america?
Most of them seem pretty reasonable?
"Entertainment & streaming" - who's trying to scrape netflix's library?
"Banking and other financial institutions" / "Government websites" / "Mailing" - seems far more likely it'll be used for credential stuffing than for "scraping".
"Ticketing" - seems far more likely that it'll get used by scalpers than for scraping
The main targets of scraping - e-commerce sites (for price comparisons) and social media networks (for user generated content) are fine to scrape. Is there some use case I'm missing here? Is there a huge contingent of people wanting to scrape ticketmaster or bank of america?
I used the term "scrapers" pretty loosely, but yes, in many cases they are more bad actors than actual scrapers. However as they say the list may include other sites, I suspect Oxylab adds sites to the list at the site owners' requests (Amazon, Target, etc are likely to be on those lists)
US court says Brightdata's web scraping service can be used to scrape Facebook:
https://www.courthousenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/me...
https://www.courthousenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/me...
I don't even see the market for 1, because amateur hobbyists will either (1) host their own server, because that's kinda the point of the hobby, or (2) go for a large commercial host like Hetzner, Digital Ocean, Linode or any of the other dozens of business-grade options that are available for <$5-10/month.
> a few hundred bucks a month
This is more than I expected a hobbyist to be able to pull off. How/where would you market to achieve this cash flow? If I could make $$$/mo with 1 computer at home, could I scale to $$$$/mo by adding compute/storage?
This is more than I expected a hobbyist to be able to pull off. How/where would you market to achieve this cash flow? If I could make $$$/mo with 1 computer at home, could I scale to $$$$/mo by adding compute/storage?
Hosting a few higher CPU requirement video game servers would put you there. Something like 2 dedicated cores, 8-16GB RAM, and 100-200GB Disk for $30/mo.
We make a service like that: https://borg.games/setup
The target is $100/m per RTX 3090.
The target is $100/m per RTX 3090.
Renting parts of a homelab sounds just as strange as renting out the extra space in your family’s refrigerator, at least at first. But thinking about it more.. internet speed/cost in much of America is insane compared to Europe, and depending on what you’re trying to do with the bandwidth it’s not like you can actually address that with cloud, where the free tier is almost useless but above the free tier it’s hard to do much without quickly getting into significant expense.
There’s collocation for mid tier usage patterns that’s cost effective maybe but I imagine it’s on the decline in general these days, and it never seemed that cost effective for hobby stuff unless you had a group of people who were splitting it.
There’s collocation for mid tier usage patterns that’s cost effective maybe but I imagine it’s on the decline in general these days, and it never seemed that cost effective for hobby stuff unless you had a group of people who were splitting it.
> internet speed/cost in much of America is insane compared to Europe
Can you expand on this? I'm in the US and have 1 Gbps symmetrical fiber for $70/month. The US is a big country and some people will have it very slow, but usually not the same type of people who self-host.
Can you expand on this? I'm in the US and have 1 Gbps symmetrical fiber for $70/month. The US is a big country and some people will have it very slow, but usually not the same type of people who self-host.
I have 8/2.5 Gbps for slightly less than half of this price.
This is a typical offer in fiber now in France.
Not that it matters because my equipment is 1 Gbps but at least I can flex :)
This is a typical offer in fiber now in France.
Not that it matters because my equipment is 1 Gbps but at least I can flex :)
Is this typical in Europe? If so, that sounds great. Years ago I heard from British friends that it was more expensive and slower. Like the United States, Europe is a big place!
Not even Amateur hobbyists; they will tend to break down into:
1. enthusiastic enough to have their own homelab and host their own kit.
2. have money and willing to spend on 'proper' hosting - either AWS/Azure/Hetzner/OVH style or cheap VPS style. You say "few hundred bucks a month" but a low quality virtual server starts from from $1/month - https://lowendbox.com/blog/1-vps-1-usd-vps-per-month/ - and will be in a datacenter. You'd need a lot of customers or a very competitive offering to make even one hundred bucks profit every month.
3. have no money or don't want to spend money, using Oracle/Amazon free tier, SDF free shell, a free account from a friend with a homelab, etc. They don't make good customers.
That leaves people who have money and are willing to spend it on a low quality product instead of a higher quality product, which is basically your third option - friends who are giving you money and putting up with a worse deal out of friendship - charity, basically.
1. enthusiastic enough to have their own homelab and host their own kit.
2. have money and willing to spend on 'proper' hosting - either AWS/Azure/Hetzner/OVH style or cheap VPS style. You say "few hundred bucks a month" but a low quality virtual server starts from from $1/month - https://lowendbox.com/blog/1-vps-1-usd-vps-per-month/ - and will be in a datacenter. You'd need a lot of customers or a very competitive offering to make even one hundred bucks profit every month.
3. have no money or don't want to spend money, using Oracle/Amazon free tier, SDF free shell, a free account from a friend with a homelab, etc. They don't make good customers.
That leaves people who have money and are willing to spend it on a low quality product instead of a higher quality product, which is basically your third option - friends who are giving you money and putting up with a worse deal out of friendship - charity, basically.
Well, can't read the article cos' there's a soccer match right now, and the head of the Spanish league, along with Telefonica, have decided that anyone behind Cloudflare and some other CDNs and hosts are guilty of pirating the TV signal. No reading this afternoon.
https://imgur.com/a/DCiE4J0
https://imgur.com/a/DCiE4J0
Yeah, I saw an article about that yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43666033
He appeared on and interview a couple weeks ago saying the cuts were only affecting pirates and freaks. So...
Edit: by "he" I mean Javier Tebas.
Edit: by "he" I mean Javier Tebas.
I know this isn't their fault, but this perfectly illustrates why having CloudFlare gatekeep the internet wasn't great idea.
Half of CloudFlare's MO is just "if we gatekeep the entire Internet, then nobody will be able to censor a single site, because then they'll be censoring the entire Internet".
Problem with that is that there's perfectly valid legal reasons to censor individual websites and people will absolutely block all of CloudFlare to get them to go away. In this case, the corpofascist copyright owners that happen to own Spain's legislature decided "well, then we'll have to have no Internet when there's a soccer game, then".
But there's plenty of other legal or moral reasons to block a website, as much as the EFF would disagree. At the very least, CloudFlare has a sterling track record with providing infrastructure to cybercriminals. Every DDoS service puts their sales pages on CloudFlare, because when you happen to have a low-orbit ion cannon[0], the easiest thing to use it on is other vendors of low-orbit ion cannons. Same with malware, because it's very easy to get your malware on a CloudFlare server and a pain in the ass for antimalware tools to block it.
[0] LOIC is a "consumer grade" DDoS tool used predominantly by trolls and activists on 4chan in the late 2000s. Probably not what the DDoS vendors are using.
Problem with that is that there's perfectly valid legal reasons to censor individual websites and people will absolutely block all of CloudFlare to get them to go away. In this case, the corpofascist copyright owners that happen to own Spain's legislature decided "well, then we'll have to have no Internet when there's a soccer game, then".
But there's plenty of other legal or moral reasons to block a website, as much as the EFF would disagree. At the very least, CloudFlare has a sterling track record with providing infrastructure to cybercriminals. Every DDoS service puts their sales pages on CloudFlare, because when you happen to have a low-orbit ion cannon[0], the easiest thing to use it on is other vendors of low-orbit ion cannons. Same with malware, because it's very easy to get your malware on a CloudFlare server and a pain in the ass for antimalware tools to block it.
[0] LOIC is a "consumer grade" DDoS tool used predominantly by trolls and activists on 4chan in the late 2000s. Probably not what the DDoS vendors are using.
Don’t need cloudflare to pirate content, if people nerf the internet out of fear of piracy, the pirates need to make that content so available to all for free with a superior UI/UX so that the censors give up and cease.
Ironically, I can't see your image because Imgur assumes my VPN is malicious and rejects traffic from it. (Instead of saying this, it lies about being over capacity. This situation mysteriously resolves when I disable the VPN.)
https://ibb.co/F4nG3LYL
https://ibb.co/F4nG3LYL
403 would also be a weird error code for over capacity - 503 would be the correct error code.. The fact that it returns 403 as the error code is more proof that it isn't just 'service being over capacity'.
I have a decently-sized homelab and I've been renting out unused disk space. I actually allocated 20TB of disk space (RAID 1) and have been renting the space out via the Storj network (https://www.storj.io).
If you haven't heard of it, Storj is essentially a distributed S3 that's been around for many years now, and the way it works is that various people run Storj nodes while the Storj company runs a proxy server that breaks files up into small encrypted chunks and stores them across N peers for redundancy.
In my case, I back up my family photos/videos/documents to a Synology NAS, and my NAS is backed up to Storj. So when I run a Storj node with part of my disk space, the payments they give me essentially cover my own backups. I'm not making a ton of money or anything, but it's enough to pay for my own backups and that's a great deal.
If you're looking to do what the OP is talking about in a simple way, this is by far the best way I've found to do it.
If you haven't heard of it, Storj is essentially a distributed S3 that's been around for many years now, and the way it works is that various people run Storj nodes while the Storj company runs a proxy server that breaks files up into small encrypted chunks and stores them across N peers for redundancy.
In my case, I back up my family photos/videos/documents to a Synology NAS, and my NAS is backed up to Storj. So when I run a Storj node with part of my disk space, the payments they give me essentially cover my own backups. I'm not making a ton of money or anything, but it's enough to pay for my own backups and that's a great deal.
If you're looking to do what the OP is talking about in a simple way, this is by far the best way I've found to do it.
This is on of the few cases that makes sense. Does not even money, but at least reduced cost one something one presumably already would have had.
Is there anything similar for compute?
Is there anything similar for compute?
I’m not aware of any!
Closest I can think of is the sheepit render farm. Thats blender specific though not generic compute
iExec? https://docs.iex.ec/
Don't know if Golem is still around but they were/are doing something like that to commoditize GPU.
As with anything crypto there's a fractal of vaporware but at least those two had/have something.
Don't know if Golem is still around but they were/are doing something like that to commoditize GPU.
As with anything crypto there's a fractal of vaporware but at least those two had/have something.
We make a service like that: https://borg.games/setup
A lot of the article can be generalized to "don't run a business in your home". It sounds like in this case, Storj is the one running the business while you are a customer (paying with storage), so you are shielded from a lot of the risks mentioned in the article.
By the way, I can't find the exact plan you described on the storj.io site, but there is this page that mentions STORJ tokens, so now I am confused as to whether this is a cryptocurrency thing or not.
https://storj.dev/support/account-management-billing/payment...
By the way, I can't find the exact plan you described on the storj.io site, but there is this page that mentions STORJ tokens, so now I am confused as to whether this is a cryptocurrency thing or not.
https://storj.dev/support/account-management-billing/payment...
It’s an option for payment. Detailed on the same link:
> Storj created the STORJ utility token as a medium of exchange on its decentralized cloud storage network. The STORJ utility token facilitates payments from people around the world for their use of the Storj network to store their data, and Storj uses it to pay our community of Storage Node Operators that rent their unused hard drive capacity and bandwidth to the network.
> Storj created the STORJ utility token as a medium of exchange on its decentralized cloud storage network. The STORJ utility token facilitates payments from people around the world for their use of the Storj network to store their data, and Storj uses it to pay our community of Storage Node Operators that rent their unused hard drive capacity and bandwidth to the network.
> A lot of the article can be generalized to "don't run a business in your home". It sounds like in this case, Storj is the one running the business while you are a customer (paying with storage), so you are shielded from a lot of the risks mentioned in the article.
If you make any income (even $1), you still have to report it on your taxes though. You might or might not be obligated to do all the other business-y stuff, but I dont think "paying with storage" gets you off the hook for taxes if you are also getting paid for storage.
If you make any income (even $1), you still have to report it on your taxes though. You might or might not be obligated to do all the other business-y stuff, but I dont think "paying with storage" gets you off the hook for taxes if you are also getting paid for storage.
I think that in general, "I should use my hobby to generate income" is a bad idea. Once you start trying to generate income, it's not a hobby any more, it's a business. And businesses have a lot of not very fun pieces that you have to account for (as the author here indicates). Some people find they like it... but to me, there's no faster way to suck the joy out of a hobby than to turn it into a business.
A lot of this is correct if you're renting servers or something like that, but what a lot of people in those subs seem to end up doing is renting their storage via services like Storj or Sia, their GPUs to services like NiceHash, and so on. Users don't visit their network directly, user data is small parts of files (encrypted), there's no need for public IPs, etc. The risks are much smaller.
> Scary Stuff
Also, things that aren't illegal where you are, but that are persecuted by some government. Whether by a rogue tyrant regime where you are, or by a foreign government that can reach out via "cyber" with impunity.
> Host stuff for friends - Friends are different because you probably trust them. A lot of the issues of customers taking advantage of you are mitigated by being friends.
Back before the term "homelab", I had DSL to my apartment, which I was using to host my own server, and a similarly-minded friend asked to temporarily colo his email server on my DSL.
Turns out friend's server also hosted some kind of political dissent Web site. My friend is a great friend, but he probably didn't realize he might've been "getting me on a list".
Also, things that aren't illegal where you are, but that are persecuted by some government. Whether by a rogue tyrant regime where you are, or by a foreign government that can reach out via "cyber" with impunity.
> Host stuff for friends - Friends are different because you probably trust them. A lot of the issues of customers taking advantage of you are mitigated by being friends.
Back before the term "homelab", I had DSL to my apartment, which I was using to host my own server, and a similarly-minded friend asked to temporarily colo his email server on my DSL.
Turns out friend's server also hosted some kind of political dissent Web site. My friend is a great friend, but he probably didn't realize he might've been "getting me on a list".
> Downsize - I know it’s hard to talk about, but if your quad CPU, 2TB RAM monster can’t run because it’s too expensive and you need the money, get something smaller that’s better suited for your workloads.
A lot of homelabs start with free discarded enterprise gear from work, which turns out to be both power-hungry and loud.
I ended up buying Atom servers for awhile, and modding them to be even quieter.
Then, recently, I offloaded all 24/7 stuff to cloud servers/services.
A lot of homelabs start with free discarded enterprise gear from work, which turns out to be both power-hungry and loud.
I ended up buying Atom servers for awhile, and modding them to be even quieter.
Then, recently, I offloaded all 24/7 stuff to cloud servers/services.
Same here - $5 a month for a vps with public IP is a bargain. I could even use it to tunnel larger transfers, like accessing my local media server behind a NAT. That said, it's definitely not as cool as running loud, beefy servers.
I run all my stuff off a 15+ year old laptop someone threw out.
Start there. :-)
Start there. :-)
Slightly newer one here (Lenovo T470). The battery still works so it’s got a built in UPS. KVM comes with it too!
All it does is scrape jobs really. I was running it on a VPS but that requires a modicum more effort to keep secure. This thing is a rotting unpatched Debian 11 and is behind a NAT with no service ports exposed on public interface.
All it does is scrape jobs really. I was running it on a VPS but that requires a modicum more effort to keep secure. This thing is a rotting unpatched Debian 11 and is behind a NAT with no service ports exposed on public interface.
This was something I considered very recently (when I realized my only remaining VGA monitor didn't support the oddball frequency put out by an old Supermicro server on which I was still running something important).
Some pros of laptop servers:
* Quiet.
* Low-ish power consumption.
* Doesn't take up much space.
* Built-in secure console.
* Built-in UPS.
Some cons:
* Limited in what drives you can put in it. Some laptops only support one drive, so you can't even do RAID mirroring. A real server will usually let you put at least a few high-capacity 3.5" drives in it, on SATA or better.
* Many laptops will overheat if run with the lid closed.
* If you get a burglary, a laptop is very likely to be stolen. (In a rack in a city apartment, I bolted down the servers with security head screws, and there was no way they were taking the whole cabinet, with a huge APC UPS anchoring it down.)
Some pros of laptop servers:
* Quiet.
* Low-ish power consumption.
* Doesn't take up much space.
* Built-in secure console.
* Built-in UPS.
Some cons:
* Limited in what drives you can put in it. Some laptops only support one drive, so you can't even do RAID mirroring. A real server will usually let you put at least a few high-capacity 3.5" drives in it, on SATA or better.
* Many laptops will overheat if run with the lid closed.
* If you get a burglary, a laptop is very likely to be stolen. (In a rack in a city apartment, I bolted down the servers with security head screws, and there was no way they were taking the whole cabinet, with a huge APC UPS anchoring it down.)
I use a few old laptops like this, but I opted to remove the batteries due to the risk of spicy pillow.
The benefits of the "built in UPS" didn't seem worth it to me because if my power is out, my internet is down anyway, and I don't run anything that needs that much uptime anyway.
The benefits of the "built in UPS" didn't seem worth it to me because if my power is out, my internet is down anyway, and I don't run anything that needs that much uptime anyway.
Hard shutdowns can cause data corruption. So, it doesn't need to be about server uptime as much as just not having a program's database get destroyed because the power went out for 10 seconds.
What about laptops with broken screens? Solves the overheat issue and potential robbers too, more likely.
Been using old laptops since HS. Remove the suspend on lid close and throw that thing in a closet.
You can always find free/cheap laptops.
You can always find free/cheap laptops.
It seems like most of those issues could be solved with a distributed orchestration layer, the same kind used to power SETI@home, BOINC, crypto mining, RC5 decryption back in the day, etc. E.g. if the administration of billing, compute, and storage were decentralized and each home node could drop in and drop out as necessary.
AWS itself has nodes that can be preempted by higher paying users, no, with barely a few seconds to shut down your workflows?
You shouldn't misrepresent your home lab as an actual hosting business with staff and a data center and insurance and all that, but there still ought to be a way to loan out idle resources on an ephemeral basis.
AWS itself has nodes that can be preempted by higher paying users, no, with barely a few seconds to shut down your workflows?
You shouldn't misrepresent your home lab as an actual hosting business with staff and a data center and insurance and all that, but there still ought to be a way to loan out idle resources on an ephemeral basis.
The economics simply don't work. Add up hardware, ongoing maintenance, electricity and ISP costs, and then the cut that the middleman will take (realistically 30-50%, probably more), and there's no reality where you can compete with a $4/month VPS from Hetzner.
Not on reliability, sure, but compute?
VPS maybe not, but GPU servers are very viable (we built one).
We're not talking starting up a hosting company but renting idle capacity. I'm already paying for the hardware, maintenance, electricity, and connectivity.
The only real marginal cost to renting some of my idle capacity would be additional power use. Versus current draw, the power supply running maxed out 24/7 would increase my power bill by $36/mo.
If we use the $4.59/mo VPS as a point of comparison, just one of the servers heating up my utility room has 24x the CPU cores ($110/mo), 96x the RAM ($440/mo) and 1024x the storage ($4,700/mo).
I would never in a million years actually do so, but I'm relatively certain I could turn several dozen CPU cores, hundreds of GB of RAM, and terabytes of disk space into more than $72/mo (assuming only getting 50% of the revenue) _somehow_.
The only real marginal cost to renting some of my idle capacity would be additional power use. Versus current draw, the power supply running maxed out 24/7 would increase my power bill by $36/mo.
If we use the $4.59/mo VPS as a point of comparison, just one of the servers heating up my utility room has 24x the CPU cores ($110/mo), 96x the RAM ($440/mo) and 1024x the storage ($4,700/mo).
I would never in a million years actually do so, but I'm relatively certain I could turn several dozen CPU cores, hundreds of GB of RAM, and terabytes of disk space into more than $72/mo (assuming only getting 50% of the revenue) _somehow_.
Sure, but AWS has human customer support and engineers overseeing all that (not to mention accountants and lawyers).
I’ve been renting compute by the hour on Vast.ai and often wonder about the servers I use. Is it reasonable to assume that any such server with, say, a 90+% reliability rating is in a data center, rather than someone’s basement?
Not really, the equipment is the main point of failure. Then maybe the connection and power, and environment (cooling)
The last 2 are really well solved.
It's crazy what's possible with USFF machines as mini-blade servers.
Low electricity and really serviceable redundancy and failover.
The last 2 are really well solved.
It's crazy what's possible with USFF machines as mini-blade servers.
Low electricity and really serviceable redundancy and failover.
This. 90% gives surprisingly large error budgets; that’s about 72 hours of downtime a month or 36.5 days a year.
I would guess most home labs are at or near 99% availability on hardware.
Scale is part of it too. I could pack my homelab into the car and take it to a friends house. They have the space, power service, and internet to accommodate me. A full data center doesn’t have that option, at least not for free-ish.
I would guess most home labs are at or near 99% availability on hardware.
Scale is part of it too. I could pack my homelab into the car and take it to a friends house. They have the space, power service, and internet to accommodate me. A full data center doesn’t have that option, at least not for free-ish.
Haha, thanks.
When you can buy 4 USFFs for the price of 1 new one, and run 2 have have a test one, and one for spares I'm not really sure what everyone is concerned about.
Enterprise, engineering, industrial grade equipment is the same high quality level, be it a server or a desktop meant for extreme environments.
Too many people are only purchasers of consumer grade equipment and would be surprised at what a huge difference the corporate/engineering/industry spec stuff is like.
When you can buy 4 USFFs for the price of 1 new one, and run 2 have have a test one, and one for spares I'm not really sure what everyone is concerned about.
Enterprise, engineering, industrial grade equipment is the same high quality level, be it a server or a desktop meant for extreme environments.
Too many people are only purchasers of consumer grade equipment and would be surprised at what a huge difference the corporate/engineering/industry spec stuff is like.
vast.ai have two kinds of servers, what they call "datacenter" and regular ones. Datacenter servers seem to have better internet and a contractual agreement with vast.ai, probably the distinction you're looking for.
Eh, the server in my basement hits one 9 of reliability. Maybe even two!
When NVidia released GPUs a generation or two ago (RTX 3000 or 4000), I remember someone on here had got the highest end model, and asking how they could rent it out for AI workloads. I'm favoriting this just so I can pull it out quickly, should I ever come across such nonsense again.
There was an interesting post here by a young developer making use of "home gpu pool" service for some ai work and it didn't look so bad. Slow, but very cost effective compared to the big cloud providers.
The article is on point but assumes that you're providing service level agreement that you can't honour.
So go ahead, sell your space and in your SLA promise absolutely nothing and bill only for what they use.
Also have an explanation ready then the feds raid your house :)
So go ahead, sell your space and in your SLA promise absolutely nothing and bill only for what they use.
Also have an explanation ready then the feds raid your house :)
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From direct experience the moment someone gets to live on your kit, there’s going to be porn on it. A contract job I had a number of years ago was to undo the “I sold someone a slice of my colo box and it went badly” problem.
The only way I could see this not ending badly is if you’re renting space for your friends. Presumably you would be selling whatever you’re renting at cost.
Even renting space within a community you’re a part of, like a local makerspace, seems like a bad idea. While it would probably mitigate the worst risks, could still leave you with people dissatisfied with the level of service.
Even renting space within a community you’re a part of, like a local makerspace, seems like a bad idea. While it would probably mitigate the worst risks, could still leave you with people dissatisfied with the level of service.
It is incredibly sad how so many people these days are unwilling to just have a hobby. Not a way to make money, not a way to advance your career, not a scam, just a thing you do that you enjoy and get better at over time.
I think most homelab'ers are doing just that, using it as a hobby. But there is of course people that would like to explore how to make a buck from it and advance their hobby.
It's almost like the cloud isn't just "someone else's computer" but perhaps a dedicated setup that allows for shared compute and storage managed by a dedicated team of people.
The author says they don’t want to gatekeep and then essentially proceeds to gatekeep.
If people are honest with the service level they can offer and then i don’t see any issues really.
I wouldn’t do that, because i don’t like to deal with users, but other people might.
If people are honest with the service level they can offer and then i don’t see any issues really.
I wouldn’t do that, because i don’t like to deal with users, but other people might.
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The internet, as a network of peers, is basically illegal.
IMO, this is a side effect from centralization under the name of security/convenience. We deserve the Internet we have today because the majority of folks don't want to learn and prefer digital nanny states and walled gardens.
You lost me at 'We deserve'. My enemies have not defeated me enough that I think I should deserve to be oppressed.
That’s not what this article is about, though. He’s not arguing that you cannot host your own content. He’s arguing that you shouldn’t sell your excess capacity to randoms on the internet for reasons enumerated in tfa.
What are you a peer of if not the content of others?
Hosting your own content is a client-server model.
Not sure what you mean here. In the “traditional” internet peer to peer model from the early days, it was always a client-server model. Just that everyone “ran their own server”. For example: You want to send me email? Great my smtp server is sitting at my desk and the mail spool lives on my local hard drive.
That’s in contrast to the centralized model where all the servers live in a set of giant concrete boxes aka data centers run by hyperscalers.
That’s in contrast to the centralized model where all the servers live in a set of giant concrete boxes aka data centers run by hyperscalers.
Does your comment above belong on my server your server or HN server?
The traditional internet is based on telnet into servers (at say a university) it is fundamentally not peer to peer.
The peers in the traditional internet would be mainframes to mainframes. Im sure they stored replicated content.
I wonder if the peps that do sell space of their homelab have a significant impact on the sales of that hosting company the author mentions he works for.
> Feds have raided datacenters and taken servers
What do they do, walk into a Google datacenter and randomly yank out a 1U server that they feel like and rip out some ethernet cables? I really don't quite understand how this works.
Any good datacenter distributes everything geographically and encrypts everything.
What do they do, walk into a Google datacenter and randomly yank out a 1U server that they feel like and rip out some ethernet cables? I really don't quite understand how this works.
Any good datacenter distributes everything geographically and encrypts everything.
You're thinking too big. "Normal size datacenters" is a small industrial building with 20 racks. And yes, they walk in, shut the power and start hauling drives. No joke.
> they walk in, shut the power and start hauling drives.
Or, if they suspect disk encryption, they don't shut the power. Instead, they dissect the power cords to add a special UPS, so that they can move servers without powering them off...
Or, if they suspect disk encryption, they don't shut the power. Instead, they dissect the power cords to add a special UPS, so that they can move servers without powering them off...
OK, so you have a special power supply that shuts off power to the system if it detects that its GPS location moved?
or, and hear me out here... you don't do fucked up shit that would require such engineering to hide your activity.
crazy I know right?! it might just work though.
your shit isn't getting raided unless you are facilitating some horrible stuff
crazy I know right?! it might just work though.
your shit isn't getting raided unless you are facilitating some horrible stuff
Block of thermite and a gyroscope? But perhaps it's still best to just... not mass seed linux ISOs for others.
Reminds me of John Birges’s famous contraption [0].
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvey%27s_Resort_Hotel_bombin...
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvey%27s_Resort_Hotel_bombin...
Some people still rent physical servers or even, shockingly, colocate their own boxes!
Datacenters retail space, power, and cooling -- sometimes bandwidth. Data privacy is up to the tenant, but datacenters have a process just like any ISP to facilitate the execution of legal warrants.
It's how it can work - I suggest you go read some articles on how this goes down and how much encryption does or doesn't help.
Datacentres don't distribute anything, that's cloud thinking.
The person with their equipment there does.
Now, setting up one's own cloud using some of the terrific IaaS/PaaS is worth learning from on youtube to see how far it's come.
Datacentres don't distribute anything, that's cloud thinking.
The person with their equipment there does.
Now, setting up one's own cloud using some of the terrific IaaS/PaaS is worth learning from on youtube to see how far it's come.
I was wondering that myself.
It led me down the path of imagining two data centers: one in your basement, and one in some office building with a reception area, some cubicles, etc. It seems like the former would see the government breaking down doors and yanking servers off the rack, ripping ethernet cables. The latter would probably see a phone call or perhaps a discussion with reception, followed by a security officer or something.
The suspicious workload could be the exact same in both cases, but this is one of those neat little spots where being a Real Business has massive advantages.
It led me down the path of imagining two data centers: one in your basement, and one in some office building with a reception area, some cubicles, etc. It seems like the former would see the government breaking down doors and yanking servers off the rack, ripping ethernet cables. The latter would probably see a phone call or perhaps a discussion with reception, followed by a security officer or something.
The suspicious workload could be the exact same in both cases, but this is one of those neat little spots where being a Real Business has massive advantages.
That's exactly how it works in Russia. This led to some innovative services and exotic contermeasures, like locating the datacentres inside the perimeter of military factories (hard for LEOs to breach unnoticed), or installing racks inside trucks - you have time to drive them out of a nearby building while the front doors are breached.
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To wit, no serious business would use your services, so your market is pretty much limited to:
1.) Amateur hobbyists (very little money there)
2.) People with Bad Intentions (horrendous from a legal and security perspective, and ethics if that’s your thing)
3.) People in your social circle