The Self-Hoster's Decision Matrix: Five Infrastructure Choices, Justified
Introduction Every self-hosting project starts with the same five decisions: how to route traffic, how to connect networks, how to manage containers, how to store photos, and where to put the servers. Each of these decisions has a clear community favorite, and in most cases, the community favorite is not what I chose. This article accompanies a proof-of-concept project in which a private cloud was built using a repurposed Dell Optiplex 7050 Micro as a home server and a Contabo VPS (€4.99/month, 4 vCPU, 8 GB RAM, 150 GB SSD, 300 Mbps, located in Germany) as the public-facing networking layer. The system runs Immich for photo management on the home server, with Headscale, Traefik, and Komodo on the VPS providing VPN coordination, reverse proxying, and container management. ...