Selfhosted

I think this is a great idea. With such a foundational deployment concept like OS there are so many options and each can change the very core of one's self hosted journey. And then expanding to different services and the different ways to manage everything could be a great discussion for every existence level.

I myself have been considering Proxmox with LXCs deployed via the Community Scripts repo versus bare metal running a declarative OS with Docker compose or direct packages versus a regular Ubuntu/Debian OS with Docker compose. I am hoping to create a self-documenting setup with versioning via the various config and compose files, but I don't know what would end up being the most effective for me.

I think my overarching deployment strategy is portability. If it's easy to take a replacement PC, get a base install loaded, then have a setup script configure the base software/user(s) and pull config/compose files and start services, and then be able to swap out the older box with minimal switchover or downtime, I think that's my goal. That may require several OS tools (Ansible, NixOS config, Docker compose, etc.) but I think once the tooling is set up it will make further service startups and full box swaps easier.

Currently I have a single machine that I started spinning up services with Docker compose but without thought to those larger goals. And now if I need to fiddle with that box and need to reboot or take it offline then all my services go down. I think my next step is to come up with a deployment strategy that remains consistent, but I use that strategy to segment services across several physical machines so that critical services (router, DNS, etc.) wouldn't be affected if I was testing out a new service and accidentally crashed a machine.

I love seeing all the different ways folks deploy their setups because I can see what might work well for me. I'm hoping this series of discussions will help me flesh out my deployment strategy and get me started on that migration.