I usually use HTTPS, because a lot of web features only work over HTTPS.

You can use Let’s Encrypt DNS challenges to get real TLS certificates for internal hosts, instead of having to use your own CA or self-signed certificates.

Tailscale has several NAT bypass / hole punching methods for double NAT (including CGNAT) and symmetric NAT, but they don’t work in 100% of cases. https://tailscale.com/blog/how-nat-traversal-works

IPv6 is definitely a good solution since then you don’t have to deal with NAT at all. IPv6 is pretty easily doable in the USA (at long as you’re not using Starlink) but can be harder in other countries that don’t have as robust IPv6 infrastructure.

this means their permissions do not work like docker, and it is not in fact a drop-in replacement for docker

It might a drop-in replacement for Docker if you’re running Docker in rootless mode? Not sure how common that is, though.

I like Unraid because it’s essentially “just Linux” but with a nice web UI. It’s got a great UI for Docker, VMs (KVM) and Linux containers (LXC).

Don’t. Use a VPN like Tailscale or Wireguard. Tailscale uses the Wireguard protocol but it’s very easy to configure, and will automatically set up a peer-to-peer mesh network for you (each node on the VPN can reach any other node, without having to route through a central server).

The only things that should be exposed publicly are things that absolutely need to be - for example, parts of Home Assistant need to be publicly exposed if you use the Google Assistant or Alexa integrations, since Google and Amazon need to be able to reach it.

this community is literally built around hosting your own local infrastructure.

That’s part of it, but using a dedicated server, colocated server, or VPS are also considered “self hosted” too. “self hosted” is broader than just having a server at home, and means any server, web service, etc where you maintain it yourself.

Hardware in your own house is generally referred to as a “home lab”.

For storing the backups, I use a storage VPS. I got one from HostHatch a few years ago during Black Friday sales, with 10TB space for $10/month. Hetzner have good deals with their storage boxes, too - they offer 5TB space for $13/month if you’re in the USA (you need to add VAT if you’re in Europe).

A good rule of thumb is to never pay more than $5/TB/month, and during Black Friday it’s closer to $2/TB/month. The LowEndTalk forum has the best Black Friday deals.

I use Borgbackup for backups, and Borgmatic to handle scheduling them. Borgbackup is a fantastic piece of software.

Borgmatic has an “append only” mode which lets you configure particular SSH keys to only be able to add data to the backup, not delete it. Even if someone/something (ransomware, malicious users, etc) gains access to your system and tries to delete the backups, they can’t. Essentially, this is protection against ransomware.

This is a very common issue with other backup solutions - the client has full access to the backup, so malware on the client system could potentially delete all the backups.

I have two backup copies of most things. One copy on my home server and one copy on my storage VPS. If you do do multiple backups, Borgbackup recommend doing two separate backups rather than doing one then rsyncing it to another server.

Crowdsec is much more efficient than fail2ban. Fail2ban is a lot of old single-threaded Python code with inefficient log parsing/tailing routines. Crowdsec is a more modern Go codebase.

If you’re looking at old-school solutions, there’s also DenyHosts.

Crowdsec blocks login attempts too.