I’m wanting to run my own SimpleX chat server and set up a Monero node as well.
Can this be done on the same machine? I was considering getting a mini PC to do this so it wouldn’t be too much of an issue with it being always on.
Or should I take a different approach and set up both separately on two different machines like a raspberry pi or something?
As I’m sure you can tell I don’t have a lot of experience with self hosting anything but want to get into it to help strengthen the networks of these communities I care about.
With the Monero node, keep in mind hard drive space. If you want the full block chain, it’s a bit over 200GB. But if you want the pruned chain, it’s like 70GB.
Cheapest? Use someone else’s hrdware (or “borrow” it) and set it up at work/school/friend’s house/cafe. Free hardware, free connectivity, free electricity.
More seriously, set everithing up on whatever spare old computer you have at hand (or use a vm running on you pc). You should not start with buying hardware.
I wouldn’t say “any old computer”, power consumption on old boxes can be high. I have an old box that pulls 120w at idle, so it only runs a couple hours a day, at most, to replicate files.
Yes, and computers people have laying around are most probably not outdated enterprise servers that draw 120w at idle :)
(if anything, that’s something a newbie self hoster may buy since they are cheap and look cool)
It’s possible to run multiple services on the same machine, and actually it’s most often done that way, yes. To keep it all more portable and maintainable, people often use containerization software (like docker with docker compose). It has lower overhead than running VMs.
If you start hosting multiple services that have a web interface, you will probably want to look into a reverse proxy software, which is basically a web server that handles TLS uniformly and sorts your HTTP services to subdomains. The Apache web server is agood example.
Prepare yourself to the need of editing text files and using the linux shell, often through SSH. Most often the text files will not need to change after having it set up properly. These text files and tge linux terminal are much more friendly in my opinion than the windows registry and the windows cmd terminal, so don’t let that discourage you.
OP, I forgot to say! There are specific communities dedicated to self hosting and/or home labbing (eg. !selfhosted@lemmy.world), you may want to participate there
A vps can be had for $10 a year. You gotta be smart about what you do and how you do it, but that neatly sidesteps some of the problems you’d run into when using your own hardware.
Start with a miniPC between 250-350 dollars. That will get you a good start. If you need to add storage, you can always add via USB.
I’m running two servers in two different locations on two i5 NUCs with USB-attached HDDs (blasphemy, I know) for storage and lots of Docker services. Its not super fast (e.g. Jellyfin) but good enough for me.
Get a barebones mini-PC (no OS so you aren’t paying for a wasted license) to install Linux. Bring questions to the community (after doing your due diligence to show that you put in some effort on your own by asking questions that show that you’re trying). People are generally pretty willing to help out. Start with figuring out which distro is the right fit for you. Check out r/homelab and other homelab resources.
If all this is too overwhelming, take other advice from someone who makes a better pitch than I did. Good luck and welcome to the hobby that is known to take over your free time and money in a deeply enjoyable way. Cheers!
I started self hosting many years ago when the company I worked for got new workstations and sold the old ones for next to nothing. It was a very powerful machine but I payed the price every month in electricity. I am now running a bunch of services on 2 mini pcs (each was about $250 USD) with laptop cpus and my electricity usage is way down (like 45 watts for both machines, router, and switch).
There will be a steep learning curve, but I highly recommend learning docker (especially docker compose) and how to setup a reverse proxy. The self hosted communities are very helpful and can answer more specific questions as they come up.