In a previous post, I conjured the image of the Soviet AK-47 as a symbol for self hosting. The rifle is a symbol of revolution, but also of liberation. Yeah, I know the Soviet Union sucked. But authoritarianism aside, commodity hardware in the hands of ordinary people can make a difference in people’s lives. By using commodity hardware to free yourself from the gentrified web, you can also begin thinking about other ways to free yourself from other forms of corporate control.

In the post-Soviet digital age, a platform that is given to you for free comes with strings attached. It is not a product for you, you are the product. There are privacy concerns, censorship concerns, and even political concerns. So it’s up to us to build independent ourselves. Here are two pieces of commodity “hardware” for self-hosting and home labbing that are commodity tools for digital liberation:

The Cheap NAS Appliance#

If you are going to liberate your data, you need a safe place to keep it. For that you need Network Attached Storage. I know that most home lab types love old enterprise servers from eBay. The gear is cheap and it teaches you about enterprise infrastructure. If your goal is to advance your career in Information Technology, this isn’t a bad move. If you have access to this kind of old gear for free, that is also a smart play. If you are buying things retail, or if you have space concerns (like living in an apartment) I recommend a Network Attached Storage Appliance to serve as the core of your infrastructure.

Compared to an old PC, a NAS appliance isn’t a powerhouse. But the purpose of the NAS is to first centralize storage, and then provide computing power. Getting started with self hosting doesn’t need much computing power up front. A couple of CPU cores and a couple of gigs of RAM are all you need to get started.

Vendors like Synology aren’t cheap, but their proprietary software is good enough. Installing apps like Docker and Plex are as easy as installing an app on your smartphone. I have a Synology DS series appliance. Another option is to go with a cheaper device that you can install Proxmox on. I am in the process of building a Terramaster NAS into a backup storage server and virtualization platform so that I can re-arrange the disks in my Synology.

A Low Cost VPS#

What good is your independent platform if it isn’t online? The other tool I recommend is a cheap Virtual Private Server. This is a small, low powered Linux container. A VPS will serve as the front end of your personal cloud infrastructure. There are plenty to shop for on Low End Box. Personally, I use RackNerd. When it comes to specs, remember that you aren’t using it for compute power or storage, just for the static IP and to run a few websites and some helper software. The absolute cheapest tier is all you need to get started.

Yes, you can open ports on your home firewall to connect to your servers, but I don’t recommend it. Yes, Digital Ocean or Hetzner are great options for when you have lots of traffic, but to get started, $1-$2 per month for a VPS is plenty.

What do we do with this stuff?#

I will write more about connecting the NAS to the VPS in the future, but the basic idea is to use the VPS as the entrance to the private cloud infrastructure running on your NAS. The NAS provides the storage, RAM, and CPU power that your VPS lacks, and the VPS provides the fast link to the Internet that your NAS lacks.

How is this going to liberate me?#

It starts with freeing yourself from the corporate cloud. While smartphones and laptop are fairly small objects, they occupy a fair amount of real estate in our lives. Pulling yourself away from the Google/Apple/Microsoft/Amazon cloud stack is a first step in taking control of your life.

The forced-dependency of the cloud is a form of rent seeking. The tendency of tech platforms to drive you toward monthly subscriptions is a more advanced form of renting. Offering goods for rent isn’t necessarily bad, but in the tech industry, you are often forced into paying fees to retain access to data that belongs to you.

Once you are free from the corporate cloud, where else can you eliminate corporate control from your life? Maybe your streaming media subscriptions?