I’d like to set up a personal cloud, probably through a vps to start. However, I’d also like to move my domains to the same server. It’s been well over a decade since I did any server admin style work, so in technology years I’m old as feck.
What are my best options to look into as far as privacy/security/reliability/price for a vps? What are my best options to allow friends and family to mindlessly backup their data to our private cloud (if such a thing exists)? I’m looking for cross platform support and the ability to host multiple websites.
If I’m a MetaARPA member with SDF I have access to their NC, so I wouldn’t have to manage that aspect? How does that work? Or should I still be researching self hosting? The websites aren’t business, just family and hobbies and fooling around learning new tips and tricks and playing with shiney objects so that’s more or less just my personal playground for now and not a primary concern. Migrating away from walled gardens and controlling my own data is what matters to me right now
I am not sure what are the conditions/benefits provided by MetaARPA level, but my guess is that any NC access would be provided only to your specific SDF account, and with limited space/bandwidth.
And if you plan to offer family/friends with access… Well, I wouldn’t want auntie Alice to see uncle’s Bob backup folders and say “oh, I don’t need any of this crap, I will delete it so @jdh knows how a nice user I am”.
Save yourself some headaches and consider the basic plan from hetzner (https://www.hetzner.com/storage/storage-share), and just create a user (with quotas!) for each member that needs access. The service literally takes care of everything, and you only will need to remember to check that your apps are still properly enabled after they perform any updates or maintenance (and they will be perfectly fine 99% of the times, with the other 1% just requiring you to click on enable/update for some specific app).
Learn from there and then you can grow to bigger plans or, if you really feel the need to it, go full ahead hosting your own instance (maybe initially a cheap droplet in digital ocean, or a compute instance in scaleway, so you can learn the basics and break things). Next level? Pick a bigger instance or one of the real servers from hetzner’s auction and go nuts. But always remember: auntie Alice won’t be happy if your tinkering risks her collection of funny cat pictures. Always keep a backup of the backup (and test that it works!)
Always consider that just moving into nextcloud gives you much more control over your data than with any google/microsoft/somethingsomething service, since you can always just launch another nc instance anywhere else and move everything there. But at the end you ALWAYS must trust someone (your providers, your vendors… your users) and if you REALLY are paranoid about some unauthorized actor accessing your information, then self hosting in your own dedicated hardware is your only way, and that costs time and effort.
Regards!