Why use an external cloud? While its technically still kind of self its not self hosted anymore IMHO. You would still be running your services, but on somebody else, rented, hardware. While I do the same for a few services (like email), i wouldn't suggest it for general services that you want to reside on your turf (like immich, music, 'arrs, passwords, whatever)
this post was submitted on 17 Apr 2026
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Why wouldn’t you recommend it? I’m running my VPS for many of those services just fine. It’s technically not selfhosted, because I’m not doing the infrastructure, but the end result is the same besides not owning the hardware and paying for the electricity bill.
Mostly because my files stay on my hardware, on my network. In case of internet down/broken/filtered I can still access all my data. That is one of the points of self hosting. Not the only one, granted, and maybe not even the most critical, but having the opportunity, better to host on your turf.
Go ahead the self host on a cloud somewhere, nothing bad about that! Have fun, enjoy, learn and be digitally independent is the core of self hosting.
Yeah, I get it. I’d like to try a Raspberry Pi setup sometime. Maybe some home automation stuff. But I don’t require much and don’t want a server rack. I’m a developer, not a network engineer.
I have almost 50 containers running on a £75 used mini pc from Ebay, chucked in the bottom of a cupboard. Anyone that tells you you need a giant server rack to self host is a gatekeeping moron
My NUC didn’t cost 75$ when I bought it new back then but can absolutely be found for less now. And it runs 40+ containers as well. I wouldn’t imagine a need for a big rack setup (for me). Potentially a newer NUC someday, but it’s hard to find a good excuse to switch.
I do wonder about the electricity cost, though. I did some very rudimentary calculations once (so could have been way off) and found that my VPS at 7 euro a month with 500 GB SSD isn’t takt that expensive in comparison.
I'm confused - I was asking if it was possible to run Cosmos Cloud in a VM for easy remote access. I'm not using any external cloud services am I? I'm not paying for anything
Ok, i misunderstood!
No worries - I was just starting to worry myself that Cosmos was routing stuff through their server 😅 but looking into it more I think they automate Samba
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
| Fewer Letters | More Letters |
|---|---|
| NUC | Next Unit of Computing brand of Intel small computers |
| SSD | Solid State Drive mass storage |
| VPS | Virtual Private Server (opposed to shared hosting) |
[Thread #248 for this comm, first seen 19th Apr 2026, 17:50] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]
What is it you're actually trying to accomplish? Connect remote services to your self-hosted cloud?
yes, so something like nextcloud for example. But also I currently am using the machine to stream Qobuz (we have 2 years free is why) and to run VacuumTube. I also want to set up the Arrstack on it.
So basically for things like Nextcloud or Immich, I was wondering if it would be easier to use Cosmos Cloud on a Debian VM than it would you set it up through Podman, such they don't recommend anyhow
I run podman containers on my bazzite machines, basically you convert a docker-compose file to a .container file, here's a bunch of examples, nextcloud is there, drop it in ~/.config/containers and run systemctl daemon-reload and it's now a systemd unit that you start stop etc like any other. Updates are with podman autoupdate.
You can use podlet to convert docker-compose files (90% it works, otherwise it gets you 90% of the way there). It's basically the fedora (/redhat) way to run containers.
I have no idea where you got it not being recommended (but adding to the main image sure is discouraged), and it's certainly better than adding a vm for containers, which pretty much defeats the purpose of containers (to run using your main kernel, but contained).
I've been running my arr stack (with gluetun in a pod) etc this way for years now, very trouble free. Here's a immich example.
It's a bit of a learning curve, but it pays off.
Update: I don't think it worked because I can't access it via localhost. I'll maybe try a bit more later but if it doesn't work I'll just start over like some suggested in my other post and go with a classic Debian installation
Localhost would only work on the machine itself. I have Cosmos installed on my own computer, but I have no experience trying it in a virtual machine. That may be a question better suited for the Cosmos Discord server, I can get you an invite if you want it
Ah, I already nuked everything and started from scratch on Debian... Many thanks tho