this post was submitted on 26 Apr 2026
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Me running everything on a single postgress instance on my shitbox 0€/month
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I realised I don’t need my servers being online 24/7, so for me that’s Raspberry Pi and equivalents, plus powering on computers on demand.
A trick I realized a few years ago: Caddy has a module you can build it with that does WOL. So I was able to run a Caddy reverse proxy that woke up my higher powered server on demand, and let it go back to sleep when I wasn't using it. Might be a bad idea for a database sever, but for my uses it was pretty simple and effective.
Get a load of this guy not using his high powered server 24/7/365.
Oh wow, that’s really cool! I do use Caddy too.
Is it that your service/website is on both (low powered server and high powered one) or is it only on the high powered? So, it’s like
I guess that’s the 2nd thing, but it’s very cool indeed! That way you can really have very convenient things for free, as it’s super cheap to run any hardware for a very while on demand. I don’t mind waiting a minute or even two when I need to access something very infrequently and don’t want to run my server 24/7. I do exactly that, but I wake up it via LAN manually.
The low powered server is the Caddy server, all it does us act as a reverse proxy for everything in my house, giving it an SSL cert and doing things like WOL. The caddy config basically just says "Here's your reverse proxy target, if you don't get a response within one second, send a WOL packet, wait a couple of seconds, then try again".
The only requirement is for you to do a custom build of caddy (this is done with a dockerfile), and to have WOL enabled on the high power server.
It means the first web request for services on the high power server might take a few seconds, but everything after that is smooth.
Is it that high power server takes a few seconds to boot? What’s the hardware you have there? I’m curious that’s the average boot time for an average high power server? I do use heavily obsolete devices for my personal servers (think of DDR-2 era devices with Intel Atom or sometimes core 2 duo devices) usually without even SSDs. With an SSD, my desktop devices (all DDR-3 era with SATA-3 disks) boot within 20…30 seconds, which is good enough for me. I assume the more modern devices would be quicker, but [single-digit, I assume] seconds sounds very good. To me, that sounds like it’s a no-brainer to have this feature. I was thinking whether I can wait minutes for something I need occasionally to boot. Seconds is just too fast. I think that delay is tolerable even for a commercial / production server, where the expectations are just different.
I'm not shutting it down, just sleeping it. My high powered server is a gaming PC from a few years ago. Running Linux, my best case scenerio for cold boot would still be 10-20 seconds, but wake from sleep is near instant.
Sleeping is something I haven’t think of, but it’s a really great way of saving power! Thanks for your input, I’d definitely replicate your approach! (When it comes to scale a bit.)
More likely your system is more sophisticated, I have just joined the hobby, so to say. But I am sure you can go much cheaper than that with bare metal. If I’d really need to host something, I’d rather buy a real server, and invest in solar power instead of paying some rent. Was a happy Digital Ocean customer, before I realised I can do the same with a Raspberry Pi. I was buying a couple of Pis a year for them. Right now, de-facto one Pi can host everything I really need. I regret I wasted about half a thousand on nothing. Could have bought a great NUC instead of wasting money on the cheapest VM for years.
Yeah solar power is much more affordable these days. I live in a vehicle so I have a 500w panel on the roof charging a 200ah lithium battery. I only use a laptop and steam deck, but could easily upscale. The whole system, including the victron controllers & shunt and the 2k inverter came out around £700, but I'm pretty sure stuff has only got cheaper since I bought it. I have way more power than I need in summer, though there are maybe two months in winter when I have to charge everything in daylight. I could always add a small wind generator if I needed. Renewables are totally feasible these days
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I think I'm at a family of four or five, but I'm alone with my dogs and my weed and my servers. Being able to legally self-host your own drug supply is great.
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ich habe meins nicht vergessen
Mine blew my socks off, but i smoke so little that I have to grow once a year max.
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I do it mainly because I love to.
So you, wife and your 6 digital kids, checks out.
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My solar covers more than my entire electric bills in the mild weather months.
I was thinking of moving to more modern systems with modest power consumption too. One of the systems I picked up is basically a case-as-a-heatsink with no fans.
This is why im doing my homelab on low powered processors (5825u NAS boards). Runs way cooler and is way more efficient. Same performance as my 9900kf gaming PC cpu wise.
Edit: this hasn't happened yet
That's fair. I have a 6800xt in my pc and I use that for my llm.
That said, I think I'm slightly misleading you. My current setup is not a 5825u. It's my old laptop with an i7-8550u. I'm going to move it to the 5825u soon.
How does running a server, assuming it's used some amount of internet bandwidth, handle residential internet speeds? If I've got a gig up and down, can I reasonably run like a jellyfin for my friends?
I was running it on a couple hundred Mbps for a while, and gig up is fine
Easily
My isp hasn't complained. I have fiber at my house and symmetrical gigabit. You should be fine if you transcode to reduce bandwidth needed as you still use your own internet. But I'm not running jellyfin on my home server.
Most servers you rent are only going to have 1Gbps internet speeds too unless you're paying extra, so if you've got symmetrical gigabit at home, you're 100% good to go, except for maybe higher downtime than a datacenter. My fiber at home seems to go out for a bit overnight occasionally as they're doing maintenance.
I also self host and I wouldn't say the cost is zero. In the UK, energy costs alone mean that a 40W computer cost £8 per month to run (assuming a 28p/kWh price).
Of course, that's assuming you run it 24/7 at full energy use, but I know my PCs run on more than that.
I got solars, my energy bill is very low, its like 40€ for 3 months
So jealous. My energy bill is like £130/m and £80 of that is electricity.
You might wanna do the math on solars, even if its a cloudy place like the UK, their lifespan and nearly 0 upkeep makes them great value
I don't own a house yet, like most people in the UK under 40, but when I do I will definitely consider it.
How's the math work on a shady place? I've got a big-ass tree above most of my roof.
No idea tbh, but from what i've heard is that it only pushes the payback age a year or two but you'll have to double check me on that
28p per kWh? Holy smokes.I think it ranges from 5 cents to 8 cents per kWh here. There are a lot of fees tacked on but those are there anyway.
Yeah just went to check and the price in my area is 22-28p/kWh, can confirm.
It's very fucked over here.
I have 50.000 dollars of server hardware and zero visitors. 😵😜
50 dollars and 0 cents isn’t a lot
Its a Dutch number notation.