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Hi, and welcome to the Self-Host Cast, a podcast dedicated to all things self-hosted.

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Today, we're discussing the results of our recent user survey with YouTube content creator

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David from dbTek.

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Thanks for listening.

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Hey everyone.

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My name is Ethan and I'll be your host today.

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For those who don't know me, I run an independent publication newsletter about self-hosting,

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links of which can be found in the show notes.

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I am super excited to be kicking off the opening episode of the Self-Host Cast with David from

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dbTek, who's agreed to sit down and talk through the results of our annual self-host user survey.

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David, thanks so much for joining me.

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Thank you for having me.

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I'm actually pretty honored to be your first guest on your first podcast.

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I've never been given this opportunity before.

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I think we're going to have a good time.

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Just a quick little bit about me.

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Like you mentioned, I run a YouTube channel where I talk about self-hosting primarily

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in Docker, but we cover a few other self-hosted solutions.

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And I've always got something new coming out.

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So if you guys want to check that out, you can look me up as dbTek over on YouTube.

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Awesome.

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And for anyone interested, I will also drop a link to David's YouTube channel in the

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show notes and would encourage everyone to check it out.

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With that being said, we do have a lot to discuss today.

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And so I'd like to take just a little time to provide a little context so we can jump

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right in.

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About a month or two ago, I hosted my publication's first ever self-host user survey, which was

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comprised of 34 questions related to self-hosting in some capacity.

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I received about 1900 total responses to the survey, which I published via charts and other

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visualizations in a blog post just a few weeks ago, actually, which I'll also link to in

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the show notes.

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I've been sitting on the idea for a podcast for some time and thought maybe a review of

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the results would be a fun way to launch it.

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Since launching my publication earlier this year, David and I have had a few occasional

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interactions and so I asked him to join me in the discussion given his technical background

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and my lack of technical background.

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The survey itself is divided into five categories with the first being environment.

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So all questions relating to self-hosting environments.

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And this leads us to our first question, do you self-host for personal or enterprise purposes?

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Right.

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And it looks like looking at the data here, you know, like 80, probably 80% of people

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do it for personal reasons.

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And honestly, I'm not super surprised by that.

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I am surprised that there was, maybe I wasn't surprised that there was also quite a few

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people that also do for enterprise purposes.

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You know, their job is probably a sysadmin at some tech company.

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And then hopefully because they love it, they bring their work home with them and they translate

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that into their own little mini home lab or data center, whatever the case is.

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But it's interesting to see how many people who aren't necessarily doing this for a tech

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job or doing this for their own personal reasons.

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I absolutely love to see that.

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Absolutely.

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I feel the same way.

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It's interesting seeing how large that slice of both is, I know enterprise by itself is

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small, but there is a significant slice, as you mentioned.

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It's interesting as I browse the self-hosted communities I'm a part of, I'll frequently

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see people endorse software that is enterprise focused.

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And I'm always asking myself who is on Reddit self-hosted subreddit looking for enterprise

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software.

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And this really points to there's probably a larger audience for that than I'm aware

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of.

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And my non-technical background that probably speaks to that a bit and why I might not have

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been as aware of it before the survey.

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There's something that we'll get into later, but there's also, I've noticed a little bit

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of gatekeeping when enterprise software gets introduced into a home lab as to whether or

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not you're actually truly a self-hoster.

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We'll get into that a little bit later, but I've noticed that that seems to be a little

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bit of a trend there on Reddit as well.

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Absolutely.

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So I'm going to jump to the next question here.

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With self-hosting for personal use, approximately how many unique users are registered across

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your applications?

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We had a lot of really interesting responses to this.

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David and I talked a little bit about this beforehand.

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We were joking about some of the responses we got in this particular question because

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we had, I don't know, somewhere between 10 and 15 responses of zero users.

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And we weren't sure if people were deploying self-hosted software that wasn't being used

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by anyone or if those were one user instances and people were answering as if they were

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being asked about how many users aside from themselves.

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I've had some time to think about this since our last discussion.

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And I think it may be one of those things where in some places you've got the ground

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floor and then the first floor and then the second floor.

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Whereas here in America, we're on the first floor or the second floor or the third floor.

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And I feel like that it could be exactly that.

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It's like I am the ground floor and everybody else is a user beyond me.

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I feel like that's absolutely what's going on with those zeros is it's just the sysadmin,

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just the home labber that's talking about they're the only user, so they count that

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as zero.

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So that's the only logical conclusion I can come to from that.

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The rest of the data is interesting.

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So two users seems to be the most popular response and then kind of whittles down from

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that.

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But interestingly enough, it spikes back up at 10 users and makes its way back down.

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I'm not sure if just how round of a number 10 was as people sat down into this survey

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rather than thinking through, oh, do I have 11 or 12?

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They just thought, hey, I'm just going to plug 10.

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It's a nice round number and that's what it is.

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Yeah.

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I think that's probably exactly what's going on there.

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Yeah.

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So David, just an interesting question.

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How many users do you have using your self-hosted deployments?

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I think my default answer would be 10, but I think if I were to actually stop and think

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about it, probably seven or eight, I think is kind of somewhere in that neighborhood

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given password managers and things like that that people don't want to have to rely on,

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a third party application that might be more easily compromised because it's well known.

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I think it's a bit of a loaded question actually, and it might not be entirely fair.

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When I think of my own self-hosted software environment, when I look at something like

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Plex or Jellyfin, I might have 12 or 13 users across friends and family, but anything else

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I host like password managers like you mentioned, the number of users is much, much smaller.

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Absolutely.

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Yeah.

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I would say that I've got the same thing.

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Most of my users are sharing my Plex or whatever, but I do have other users that are still using

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some other stuff on my network.

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So if you were to take Plex or a media server out of the equation, it's probably three,

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but everybody likes to have a friend with a Plex server.

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Yes.

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So moving on, next question, why do you self-host?

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This was a multiple choice question, so we gave a couple of different selections, and

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I will list them in the order of number of responses starting with the greatest number

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of responses.

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So we had hobby, education, privacy, flexibility, cost, business, and then other.

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I don't think any of these are super surprising, at least the order they came out in.

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David, does anything stick out to you when you look at those responses?

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No, no, not at all.

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I'm actually really happy to see that education came in after hobby, because I love the idea

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of people learning for the sake of learning.

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And of course, that then translates into the hobby, and then you get the side effects of

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flexibility and cost.

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Cost has its own caveats for different reasons, but I love that education is so high up on

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that list just because I love to learn, I love to teach people.

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So seeing that so high up really makes me happy.

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Absolutely.

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What I think hobby is encouraging for myself, as I mentioned, I don't work in a technical

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field, but given my self-host experience, I find myself leaning more and more towards

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a career in a technical field.

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And I'm always a little concerned of, hey, I really enjoy doing this stuff in my free

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time, but if I did it for a living, would I not enjoy doing it as much?

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And so we have a question later that speaks to how many of our responders in this survey

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work in a technical field.

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So it's encouraging to see that all these people do work in technical fields, yet continue

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to embrace this as their hobby and continue it when they get home after their normal working

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hours.

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Yeah, absolutely.

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I 100% agree with that.

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Yep.

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And then privacy, that's not surprising that that's so high up.

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There are a couple of privacy related questions that we can talk in further detail when we

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reach those.

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Sure.

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Flexibility makes sense, again, given the hosted paid offerings that are out there and

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how many great pieces of software have been developed for the self-hosted community that

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are completely free of charge, and then cost kind of lumps into that sentiment as well.

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Like you mentioned, there isn't necessarily a cost to using a lot of the free services

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out there, but one of the things that we had talked about was if there's a project that

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you use a lot that you're passionate about that you want to see succeed, I think there

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is a cost associated with that if you want to donate to these developers, these organizations

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to help them keep building the applications you love.

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And I know that that kind of gets into a weird area for some people because they want the

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free open source software, the FOSS.

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But there's got to be a cost.

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You have to support these people in order to make sure they can keep doing their jobs.

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And that's them in return supporting us.

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Absolutely.

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Absolutely.

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Sometimes I think it's not obvious the amount of effort developers and other people put

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into the efforts behind developing and providing the resources that goes behind some of this

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self-hosted software.

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Yeah.

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If I can kind of plug something I've got coming up real quick that lends itself to that, I

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have got a video coming up soon that I'm going to show how to do a security check on a Docker

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container so that it will actually go through and look for all of the vulnerabilities that

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are known for that container.

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And I did kind of an A-B test earlier for a kind of a one-man operation who's getting

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into developing Docker containers.

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And I did the same test on a container from Linux servers developers.

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And the number of vulnerabilities comparing A to B is scary.

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And I want to say that the bad, I'm using air quotes there, application is a bad application.

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It's just there's more security thought when you've got a bigger team and you've got somebody

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who can specialize in patching those vulnerabilities.

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So I've got this video coming out.

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I just started kind of looking into it today.

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It's coming out soon.

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And I think it'll kind of give a good indication of why it's important to have a team of people

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often working on a project and why it's important to support that team to make sure that your

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containers are as safe as possible.

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Absolutely.

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Absolutely.

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Looking forward to it.

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Moving on to the next question, we have, this was again a multiple choice question and this

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was more of a multi-select understanding that people might have multiple options.

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It is select the hardware option or options that you use to deploy your self-hosted software.

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And again, so we have a number of responses in order of those responses that receive the

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highest amount of votes.

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We have low powered device, desktop PC, custom built enterprise, server cluster, laptop,

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mobile phone, and other.

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And so this one's interesting to me.

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This is one of the more interesting responses I think we received in the survey.

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So when I think about laptop and mobile phone, those being at the bottom make complete sense

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to me.

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I know people occasionally will recommend laptops.

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You just plug them in constantly and just hope the battery doesn't light on fire or

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explode eventually.

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Right.

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And obviously mobile phones aren't necessarily ideal for self-hosting.

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I was very surprised by both low powered devices and desktop PCs being so high in number of

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responses.

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I'm actually not terribly surprised by the low powered device being the top response

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actually.

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There are so many mini PCs that you can get out there or single board computers that have

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got a max TDP of like 15 Watts.

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And you can get them relatively inexpensive, a couple hundred bucks if you don't know where

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to shop anyway.

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And I think it's a great way for people to get in to self-hosting without messing up

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their power bill too much.

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My first server was, it actually was an old desktop PC.

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It was an AMD FX8350.

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It had 16 gigs of RAM and it had an Nvidia GTX 770 in it.

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And that CPU was power hungry.

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I think it was a couple of hundred Watts for its max TDP.

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And don't quote me on that.

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I don't remember.

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It's been a long time.

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But I think these low powered devices, they're getting inexpensive.

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They're easy to get a hold of and they don't use much power.

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And I think it's great that people are going that route versus recycling an old power.

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Power hungry device.

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Of course, then you've also got the issue with also not wanting to fill the landfill

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full of e-waste, right?

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So it's kind of walking that line of finding the right device for your setup.

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And I think with most people getting into self-hosting, they're doing password managers.

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They're doing low footprint as far as power is concerned.

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They do these low footprint, not power hungry applications that can get by on something

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like that.

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So I'm stoked actually to see the low powered stuff there.

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The desktop PC stuff is again, recycling hardware that would have otherwise gone in the landfill,

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but also may have more power than one of those low powered devices.

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So you can probably push more intense applications through them.

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The one thing that I thought was interesting that I didn't see on here that may have fallen

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into other was NAS devices being a self-hosted device.

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You know, I've actually, I've got a Synology back here that it was, that's where my primary

243
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Docker stuff resides for my in-home stuff.

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So I wonder if that's where some of that other in this category came from was NAS devices

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because it wasn't specifically listed in there.

246
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Yeah, absolutely.

247
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And I should probably add that as a note for next year to include that as an option because

248
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to your point that other, the number of other responses is actually fairly high.

249
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And just jumping back to low powered devices, I think I might be just personally biased

250
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against them because I'm that person that probably throws way too much at the raspberry

251
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pies I have in my basement.

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And I blame them when things aren't going, working as expected or things slow down or

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all my memory is being consumed.

254
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So yeah, that's probably more me than it is a critique of anything else.

255
00:15:03,040 --> 00:15:04,040
Sure.

256
00:15:04,040 --> 00:15:08,820
Well, and just one little last thing on that is that when the world shut down for a couple

257
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of years, raspberry pies were hard to get a hold of.

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And if you could get hold of one, they were five or six or seven times the price of what

259
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they should be.

260
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Whereas you could still get some of these low powered devices relatively inexpensively.

261
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And I've got half a dozen raspberry pies kind of strewn about the house doing different

262
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things.

263
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So I get it.

264
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But I kind of think that's maybe where these low powered devices picked up traction was

265
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when the pies just weren't readily available.

266
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Absolutely.

267
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And to your NAS point then, moving on to the next question, do you deploy a network attack

268
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storage device, a NAS for storage in your self-hosted environment?

269
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But this was an interesting question, but I wasn't surprised by the responses only because,

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and I think we'll talk about this a little bit later, at least from a personal self-hosting

271
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perspective.

272
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And again, I'm biased because I'm not as technical.

273
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So maybe the communities I spend my time in aren't either, but so many people get into

274
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self-hosting for media streaming.

275
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And what do you typically need for media streaming?

276
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You need storage and a lot of it.

277
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And so a NAS is normally how you achieve that.

278
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What's interesting is I've got a NAS that specifically, well, its primary focus is storage,

279
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whether it's for the containers that I'm running on that device.

280
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But it also runs NFS shares for a Proxmox cluster that I've got.

281
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But I've actually got another, well, I've got a second NAS that's just backup of all

282
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of that.

283
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We're not going to count that.

284
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But I've got just a little inexpensive TerraMaster device.

285
00:16:37,960 --> 00:16:40,880
They're not sponsoring this, but that's what it is.

286
00:16:40,880 --> 00:16:44,880
And its whole purpose is to, it is my Plex server.

287
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It is my Plex device because it's got one of those Intel quick video sync processors

288
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in it.

289
00:16:50,920 --> 00:16:55,480
But it actually pulls all of the media from the first NAS.

290
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So there's nothing actually stored on it other than the Plex application.

291
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So it's a total waste of so much.

292
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But it's what I had.

293
00:17:03,440 --> 00:17:05,820
I needed a Plex server like right now.

294
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So that's what I used.

295
00:17:06,820 --> 00:17:10,080
And I don't feel like trying to move it to a different device yet.

296
00:17:10,080 --> 00:17:11,080
That's okay.

297
00:17:11,080 --> 00:17:15,560
I don't think self-hosting is necessarily synonymous with efficiency.

298
00:17:15,560 --> 00:17:21,240
And I think engineered is often a word I would toss around when describing self-hosted environments.

299
00:17:21,240 --> 00:17:22,240
So absolutely.

300
00:17:22,240 --> 00:17:27,000
Sometimes you got to do something janky to get something to work and then it works.

301
00:17:27,000 --> 00:17:28,800
And it's kind of that saying of it.

302
00:17:28,800 --> 00:17:31,720
If it works and it's stupid, it's not stupid.

303
00:17:31,720 --> 00:17:33,200
So I think it's kind of the same thing.

304
00:17:33,200 --> 00:17:34,560
I got this working.

305
00:17:34,560 --> 00:17:37,240
I'm not going to touch it again until it doesn't work.

306
00:17:37,240 --> 00:17:40,440
And then I'll fix my jank here.

307
00:17:40,440 --> 00:17:44,880
And I think that's kind of a pretty common thing in the self-hosting community.

308
00:17:44,880 --> 00:17:50,560
I think we all have that one machine in our basement who has like 3,000 days of uptime

309
00:17:50,560 --> 00:17:55,840
because at one day a long time ago, we finally got something to work and we're too afraid

310
00:17:55,840 --> 00:17:56,840
to touch it.

311
00:17:56,840 --> 00:18:01,500
And so we just let it do its thing and just dread the day where one day it doesn't do

312
00:18:01,500 --> 00:18:03,000
that thing anymore.

313
00:18:03,000 --> 00:18:04,000
Yeah.

314
00:18:04,000 --> 00:18:10,680
So one of my NASs, I was disassembling it because I wanted to put some more RAM in it

315
00:18:10,680 --> 00:18:14,160
and I wasn't paying attention and I broke off the control board to do the power and

316
00:18:14,160 --> 00:18:16,080
the reset and all of that.

317
00:18:16,080 --> 00:18:20,720
And then I realized that I couldn't turn it on and off with the button anymore.

318
00:18:20,720 --> 00:18:24,280
So if it powers off, I have to, I've left the whole shell off of it.

319
00:18:24,280 --> 00:18:29,560
I have to do a bios or a jumper reset on the board and then plug it back in so that it

320
00:18:29,560 --> 00:18:30,840
will power up properly.

321
00:18:30,840 --> 00:18:31,840
Yeah.

322
00:18:31,840 --> 00:18:36,840
So I was devastated when I broke that piece off and again, it works.

323
00:18:36,840 --> 00:18:39,960
I'm not going to touch it, but it's on a UPS now.

324
00:18:39,960 --> 00:18:42,600
So that's likely that it going down is very, very slim.

325
00:18:42,600 --> 00:18:45,280
And I couldn't be more thankful for that right now.

326
00:18:45,280 --> 00:18:46,280
I love it.

327
00:18:46,280 --> 00:18:49,400
I have to say that's somewhat encouraging because I feel like online I read stories

328
00:18:49,400 --> 00:18:51,520
like that all the time.

329
00:18:51,520 --> 00:18:56,460
And to sit here and look at someone like you, who's a very successful content creator and

330
00:18:56,460 --> 00:19:01,220
I'm looking at your home lab sitting behind you right now in your setup and to know that

331
00:19:01,220 --> 00:19:06,880
you also have your own assorted machines that are just very jankily put together and maybe

332
00:19:06,880 --> 00:19:10,360
might not or might stop working at any point in time.

333
00:19:10,360 --> 00:19:14,560
It gives me a little bit of hope that maybe I'm not alone when that stuff happens to me.

334
00:19:14,560 --> 00:19:15,640
No, absolutely.

335
00:19:15,640 --> 00:19:21,080
Like I had mentioned in our previous conversation leading up to this, the lighting I've got

336
00:19:21,080 --> 00:19:24,120
here makes everything look a lot better than it really is.

337
00:19:24,120 --> 00:19:28,080
So it's very dark in that corner and there's a reason for that.

338
00:19:28,080 --> 00:19:29,880
But no, I think everybody's got their jank.

339
00:19:29,880 --> 00:19:34,480
It's just whether or not they're willing to admit it and even in some cases show it on

340
00:19:34,480 --> 00:19:37,160
the internet, whether it's Reddit or YouTube or wherever.

341
00:19:37,160 --> 00:19:38,160
So yeah.

342
00:19:38,160 --> 00:19:39,160
Right.

343
00:19:39,160 --> 00:19:40,160
That sounds good.

344
00:19:40,160 --> 00:19:45,680
I'm jotting down in my notes colored lighting for my equipment to make it look better and

345
00:19:45,680 --> 00:19:46,680
more impressive.

346
00:19:46,680 --> 00:19:47,680
Yep.

347
00:19:47,680 --> 00:19:49,720
And you just got to pick your favorite color and just run with it.

348
00:19:49,720 --> 00:19:50,720
Okay.

349
00:19:50,720 --> 00:19:51,720
One color, not RGB.

350
00:19:51,720 --> 00:19:52,720
Got it.

351
00:19:52,720 --> 00:19:53,720
Okay.

352
00:19:53,720 --> 00:19:54,800
So moving on to the next question.

353
00:19:54,800 --> 00:19:55,800
This is somewhat related.

354
00:19:55,800 --> 00:19:57,440
I think we talked a little bit about this earlier.

355
00:19:57,440 --> 00:20:01,600
Do you typically avoid self-hosting sensitive or important data?

356
00:20:01,600 --> 00:20:07,280
And so there were about, I don't know, maybe 25% of the responses said yes.

357
00:20:07,280 --> 00:20:09,040
And most people said no.

358
00:20:09,040 --> 00:20:13,540
And this is an interesting question because keeping sensitive information close to us

359
00:20:13,540 --> 00:20:19,440
and out of the hands of others is actually a primary reason for why many people are self-hosting.

360
00:20:19,440 --> 00:20:20,440
Absolutely.

361
00:20:20,440 --> 00:20:26,400
And I think, you know, it was my passwords was one of the, like after I did my obligatory

362
00:20:26,400 --> 00:20:32,760
Plex server to get me into the hobby, my first real big jump was self-hosting a password

363
00:20:32,760 --> 00:20:33,760
manager.

364
00:20:33,760 --> 00:20:38,440
I kept having issues with all of the commercial options that were out there.

365
00:20:38,440 --> 00:20:43,360
And then shortly after that, I started actually backing up my phones to my local machines.

366
00:20:43,360 --> 00:20:47,560
And I've gone through several different iterations of how I do that.

367
00:20:47,560 --> 00:20:51,320
And like you had mentioned earlier, like you got to keep your spouse happy.

368
00:20:51,320 --> 00:20:58,800
You've got to keep the solutions simple so that they don't hate having to participate.

369
00:20:58,800 --> 00:21:02,960
And so like I've got a couple of different solutions for like backing up my phone and

370
00:21:02,960 --> 00:21:05,960
backing up my wife's phone and they just work.

371
00:21:05,960 --> 00:21:10,640
And I'm honestly like going back to the NASS question before this, I'm honestly surprised

372
00:21:10,640 --> 00:21:12,760
that more people aren't.

373
00:21:12,760 --> 00:21:16,040
I know it's almost 80% of people are.

374
00:21:16,040 --> 00:21:18,800
Oh wait, do you typically avoid?

375
00:21:18,800 --> 00:21:19,800
Yes.

376
00:21:19,800 --> 00:21:20,800
Okay.

377
00:21:20,800 --> 00:21:24,320
So like 80% of people are backing or are storing passwords, are storing photos, that sort

378
00:21:24,320 --> 00:21:25,320
of thing.

379
00:21:25,320 --> 00:21:26,320
Yeah.

380
00:21:26,320 --> 00:21:31,080
I'm surprised it's not closer to 90% based again on the number of people that are using

381
00:21:31,080 --> 00:21:34,680
NASS and the privacy question you mentioned earlier.

382
00:21:34,680 --> 00:21:38,700
I'm surprised those numbers aren't higher on this particular question.

383
00:21:38,700 --> 00:21:41,240
I think you probably hit the nail on the head.

384
00:21:41,240 --> 00:21:47,240
If I had to guess, I would think an adequate backup strategy is probably what scares the

385
00:21:47,240 --> 00:21:49,920
most people about hosting that information.

386
00:21:49,920 --> 00:21:56,240
If I'm the only one hosting my passwords and my, God forbid my house burns down, do I have

387
00:21:56,240 --> 00:21:58,320
access to all my passwords?

388
00:21:58,320 --> 00:22:03,880
I think all the tools out there, if you go to some of the common password manager, GitHub

389
00:22:03,880 --> 00:22:09,440
pages and all the documentation out there, there's not, or at least I don't have a concern

390
00:22:09,440 --> 00:22:13,040
that people are going, that my data is going to be compromised.

391
00:22:13,040 --> 00:22:14,880
It's always, is it backed up?

392
00:22:14,880 --> 00:22:19,520
What happens if I lose, if my server goes down or something happens?

393
00:22:19,520 --> 00:22:22,280
And I would guess that's probably other people's concerns.

394
00:22:22,280 --> 00:22:27,440
Although if there are people newish to self-hosting and they're not quite comfortable opening

395
00:22:27,440 --> 00:22:33,400
ports for reverse proxies so they can publicly access this data, I can see that being a concern,

396
00:22:33,400 --> 00:22:38,920
but I would guess it's probably mostly lack of confidence in a decent backup strategy.

397
00:22:38,920 --> 00:22:39,920
Absolutely.

398
00:22:39,920 --> 00:22:44,040
And that's actually one of the reasons that I switched from using, when I first started,

399
00:22:44,040 --> 00:22:49,040
I was using Open Media Vault as kind of my Docker host and my NASS solution in the whole

400
00:22:49,040 --> 00:22:50,040
bit.

401
00:22:50,040 --> 00:22:55,880
And then somebody in my Discord encouraged me to try out Proxmox and I didn't understand

402
00:22:55,880 --> 00:22:58,440
why until I deployed it.

403
00:22:58,440 --> 00:23:03,280
And then I realized, oh, I can also deploy a Proxmox backup server and I can make those

404
00:23:03,280 --> 00:23:06,640
two talk to each other with just a few clicks.

405
00:23:06,640 --> 00:23:11,760
And then I can run daily backups where I can run whenever I want to run my backups of my

406
00:23:11,760 --> 00:23:14,640
Proxmox stuff over to that backup server.

407
00:23:14,640 --> 00:23:19,880
And if I've got a container or a service that goes down, again, with just a few clicks,

408
00:23:19,880 --> 00:23:24,280
I can bring that service right back up to the way it was yesterday.

409
00:23:24,280 --> 00:23:27,560
And the amount of data that I'm going to lose in the course of 24 hours with my setup is

410
00:23:27,560 --> 00:23:28,920
very, very minimal.

411
00:23:28,920 --> 00:23:33,600
But again, there's a cost associated with having your primary server, it might be your

412
00:23:33,600 --> 00:23:38,560
Proxmox server, but then of course you're going to want a second piece of hardware for

413
00:23:38,560 --> 00:23:39,560
that backup.

414
00:23:39,560 --> 00:23:42,240
And then you've got hard drives and you've got storage and you've got...

415
00:23:42,240 --> 00:23:44,880
So there's a cost associated with that.

416
00:23:44,880 --> 00:23:50,200
I think that actually maybe now that I'm talking myself through this, maybe that's part of

417
00:23:50,200 --> 00:23:51,200
the reason.

418
00:23:51,200 --> 00:23:55,440
Like you said, backups are important and there's a cost associated with on-site backups.

419
00:23:55,440 --> 00:24:00,840
And sometimes it's just easier to let Apple or Google backup your photos.

420
00:24:00,840 --> 00:24:01,840
Absolutely.

421
00:24:01,840 --> 00:24:05,260
So I want to keep moving along here, jumping to the next question.

422
00:24:05,260 --> 00:24:08,520
Select the operating systems currently installed on your servers.

423
00:24:08,520 --> 00:24:14,040
So again, multiple selections, you could have selected multiple options based on the fact

424
00:24:14,040 --> 00:24:17,680
that people probably have multiple machines or some people do.

425
00:24:17,680 --> 00:24:23,280
So starting with the most responses, we have generic Linux, Proxmox, Raspberry Pi, OS,

426
00:24:23,280 --> 00:24:32,640
True NAS, Windows desktop, Unraid, Windows Server, ESXi, BSD, Mac OS, and then other

427
00:24:32,640 --> 00:24:35,960
is actually higher than the last few options, but I usually include that at the bottom since

428
00:24:35,960 --> 00:24:37,760
it's not a specific option.

429
00:24:37,760 --> 00:24:40,640
So just a couple of notes from facilitating the survey.

430
00:24:40,640 --> 00:24:47,600
I think one of the biggest points of feedback I got as I was facilitating it is people were

431
00:24:47,600 --> 00:24:52,940
a little upset that I didn't break out all of the distributions of Linux and group them

432
00:24:52,940 --> 00:25:00,240
all as generic Linux, which I had contemplated, but they're just way too many to list.

433
00:25:00,240 --> 00:25:04,080
And I think that probably would have fractured the results a little bit and maybe hidden

434
00:25:04,080 --> 00:25:08,280
some of the other things we have going on here that aren't just generic distributions

435
00:25:08,280 --> 00:25:09,280
of Linux.

436
00:25:09,280 --> 00:25:11,160
100% agree with that.

437
00:25:11,160 --> 00:25:16,960
I've done both generic Linux, as you put it, typically with either Ubuntu or Debian.

438
00:25:16,960 --> 00:25:21,240
And then I've played a little bit around with True NAS.

439
00:25:21,240 --> 00:25:22,880
I need to look into Unraid.

440
00:25:22,880 --> 00:25:25,640
So many people have recommended me looking into Unraid.

441
00:25:25,640 --> 00:25:30,500
But what's funny now is like I mentioned, I use Proxmox, but in my containers, I just

442
00:25:30,500 --> 00:25:35,720
install Debian in a container and deploy Docker like I normally would on bare metal.

443
00:25:35,720 --> 00:25:39,480
But again, it's all about the backup strategy that Proxmox affords me.

444
00:25:39,480 --> 00:25:43,640
So I'm kind of doing a hybrid thing with that.

445
00:25:43,640 --> 00:25:48,160
But the numbers that I'm seeing here don't really surprise me even a little bit as far

446
00:25:48,160 --> 00:25:53,080
as generic Linux, because like you said, there's so many different versions being the highest

447
00:25:53,080 --> 00:25:55,800
and then Proxmox being right below that.

448
00:25:55,800 --> 00:25:59,960
None of this really surprises me all that much, except for maybe Windows desktop being

449
00:25:59,960 --> 00:26:01,720
higher than Unraid.

450
00:26:01,720 --> 00:26:04,320
That one kind of surprises me.

451
00:26:04,320 --> 00:26:07,280
But that's only because I don't like hosting on Windows.

452
00:26:07,280 --> 00:26:12,360
So that's my own judgment against hosting, is I just don't like hosting on Windows.

453
00:26:12,360 --> 00:26:17,080
Yeah, I'm a little embarrassed to admit that the first three or four months of my self-hosting

454
00:26:17,080 --> 00:26:21,720
journey I did try and host a server with Windows desktop.

455
00:26:21,720 --> 00:26:25,240
I had heard for so long, hey, use the operating system you're comfortable with.

456
00:26:25,240 --> 00:26:26,600
That's the best one for you.

457
00:26:26,600 --> 00:26:28,760
And so I've been using Windows my entire life.

458
00:26:28,760 --> 00:26:30,520
And so that's what I had used.

459
00:26:30,520 --> 00:26:32,440
And that was not the right option for me.

460
00:26:32,440 --> 00:26:33,960
I had an awful experience.

461
00:26:33,960 --> 00:26:35,860
It was just not efficient.

462
00:26:35,860 --> 00:26:40,720
And so I ended up switching that particular machine over to Unraid.

463
00:26:40,720 --> 00:26:41,880
I've been very happy with it.

464
00:26:41,880 --> 00:26:46,000
And I'm also surprised to see how Unraid is kind of towards the middle of the pack, but

465
00:26:46,000 --> 00:26:50,360
it's really all those responses after the first few don't have many responses at all.

466
00:26:50,360 --> 00:26:57,040
I spend a lot of time for the newsletter that I facilitate each week, exploring it and looking

467
00:26:57,040 --> 00:27:00,800
for new software and new applications that are being released.

468
00:27:00,800 --> 00:27:06,480
And inevitably, I feel like with all new software, there is a GitHub issue where someone is asking

469
00:27:06,480 --> 00:27:12,520
for someone to create an Unraid community application template for this software so they can run

470
00:27:12,520 --> 00:27:13,520
it.

471
00:27:13,520 --> 00:27:18,320
And so I think Unraid attracts a lot of new self-hosted users who want to use the convenience

472
00:27:18,320 --> 00:27:21,600
of something like Docker containers or something else.

473
00:27:21,600 --> 00:27:25,320
And it becomes a little bit of a crutch for them where they don't necessarily learn how

474
00:27:25,320 --> 00:27:29,020
to write their own run commands or their own compose files.

475
00:27:29,020 --> 00:27:33,720
And as a result, very consistently, I see people asking for these Unraid templates.

476
00:27:33,720 --> 00:27:39,040
And there's nothing wrong with it, but it feels my experience out in the real world

477
00:27:39,040 --> 00:27:43,760
feels that Unraid should maybe be a little higher than it is in this survey.

478
00:27:43,760 --> 00:27:47,820
But again, I'm biased and the communities I frequent are biased.

479
00:27:47,820 --> 00:27:50,080
So it might be a result of that.

480
00:27:50,080 --> 00:27:51,080
Yeah, absolutely.

481
00:27:51,080 --> 00:27:55,680
I think the other thing that might be turning people off from Unraid, at least to get started,

482
00:27:55,680 --> 00:27:57,400
is the initial cost of the license.

483
00:27:57,400 --> 00:28:00,880
I know it's not much, but I think if you're just getting in, you want to tinker around,

484
00:28:00,880 --> 00:28:05,880
you want to try new things, you want to have the lowest barrier to entry cost as possible.

485
00:28:05,880 --> 00:28:11,440
And I think that's why a lot of people have looked at Raspberry Pi OS or Proxmox or generic

486
00:28:11,440 --> 00:28:12,720
Linux or whatever.

487
00:28:12,720 --> 00:28:18,180
But one of these days, I'm going to put Unraid on one of my NAS devices over here and actually

488
00:28:18,180 --> 00:28:19,180
give it a go.

489
00:28:19,180 --> 00:28:20,180
Yeah?

490
00:28:20,180 --> 00:28:21,180
I'm excited to do it.

491
00:28:21,180 --> 00:28:22,880
Like I said, I've tried TrueNAS Core.

492
00:28:22,880 --> 00:28:27,640
I wasn't a big fan, but honestly, when I started Open Media Vault, I wasn't a big fan.

493
00:28:27,640 --> 00:28:32,400
And it was just because I need to learn the processes for how each of those things work.

494
00:28:32,400 --> 00:28:37,240
And I think I've got enough stuff off my plate right now that I can dedicate some time to

495
00:28:37,240 --> 00:28:38,240
Unraid.

496
00:28:38,240 --> 00:28:43,320
So I think I'm going to sign up for the free trial, give it a go, see what happens.

497
00:28:43,320 --> 00:28:46,960
And maybe I'll start doing some Unraid content here real soon.

498
00:28:46,960 --> 00:28:50,360
And the last point I want to make on this question, a year or two ago, I actually probably

499
00:28:50,360 --> 00:28:57,160
would have checked the box for Mac OS, and not because I necessarily used it for self-hosting

500
00:28:57,160 --> 00:29:00,200
the traditional software, but I'm an Android user.

501
00:29:00,200 --> 00:29:08,280
And so I spun up a virtual Mac OS machine on Proxmox so I could host Air Message and

502
00:29:08,280 --> 00:29:14,920
Blue Bubbles and join the iMessage chat with the rest of my entire family who constantly

503
00:29:14,920 --> 00:29:20,200
nagged me for having the wrong phone and not being able to be included in their conversations.

504
00:29:20,200 --> 00:29:24,720
But it's a little hard to keep up with as the Mac OS upgrades come out, so I actually

505
00:29:24,720 --> 00:29:26,000
ended up abandoning it.

506
00:29:26,000 --> 00:29:30,240
Now I just have to listen to the complaints of my family every other day.

507
00:29:30,240 --> 00:29:31,240
Yeah.

508
00:29:31,240 --> 00:29:32,760
I also spun up a Proxmox VM.

509
00:29:32,760 --> 00:29:37,860
I found a site that provided them, spun it up, messed around, was real impressed how

510
00:29:37,860 --> 00:29:39,360
easy it was.

511
00:29:39,360 --> 00:29:42,680
And it's still said there, and I haven't touched it in so long, but I love being able to use

512
00:29:42,680 --> 00:29:48,720
that to make people think that you're using an official iOS device to get the red-colored

513
00:29:48,720 --> 00:29:49,720
bubbles and whatnot.

514
00:29:49,720 --> 00:29:50,720
I think that's great.

515
00:29:50,720 --> 00:29:51,720
Yeah.

516
00:29:51,720 --> 00:29:55,400
It sounds like maybe you and I might have had different experiences because that virtual

517
00:29:55,400 --> 00:29:59,480
machine was one of those, I somehow got it working, and now I'm never going to think

518
00:29:59,480 --> 00:30:02,720
about it or touch it because I'm afraid I'm going to break something.

519
00:30:02,720 --> 00:30:03,720
Okay.

520
00:30:03,720 --> 00:30:05,840
Anyway, moving on to the next question.

521
00:30:05,840 --> 00:30:10,040
Are you utilizing hosted cloud storage for off-site backups?

522
00:30:10,040 --> 00:30:14,540
So prompting for this question was really every time I see people talk about off-site

523
00:30:14,540 --> 00:30:18,960
backups and how they do that, ideally, I think everyone would probably have their own physical

524
00:30:18,960 --> 00:30:23,720
hardware that they could host at friend's house or family's house or somewhere where

525
00:30:23,720 --> 00:30:28,080
they still have control of their data and they don't have to worry about prying eyes

526
00:30:28,080 --> 00:30:29,160
on it.

527
00:30:29,160 --> 00:30:31,640
But I think for many of us, that's unrealistic.

528
00:30:31,640 --> 00:30:36,840
And so you'll often see things like Backblaze and Google Drive when it had its unlimited

529
00:30:36,840 --> 00:30:38,360
storage come up.

530
00:30:38,360 --> 00:30:42,400
And so I was really interested to see the results of how many people actually do that

531
00:30:42,400 --> 00:30:47,680
versus either not having off-site backups or having their own machine sitting somewhere

532
00:30:47,680 --> 00:30:48,680
else.

533
00:30:48,680 --> 00:30:51,000
And the responses are about split.

534
00:30:51,000 --> 00:30:55,880
There are more people not using hosted cloud storage than are, but not by many.

535
00:30:55,880 --> 00:30:56,880
Yeah.

536
00:30:56,880 --> 00:31:02,120
It's like 45% and 55%, respectively, there for yes and no.

537
00:31:02,120 --> 00:31:07,360
And honestly, I'm ashamed to admit that I am in the no category here.

538
00:31:07,360 --> 00:31:11,440
Like you had mentioned, the ideal situation is to have a friend with a solid internet

539
00:31:11,440 --> 00:31:15,480
connection and no bandwidth limits and you drop a piece of hardware at their house and

540
00:31:15,480 --> 00:31:16,680
you just connect to it.

541
00:31:16,680 --> 00:31:19,120
But that isn't the reality for a lot of people.

542
00:31:19,120 --> 00:31:26,160
And I think one of my next big projects, at least for my own home, not necessarily for

543
00:31:26,160 --> 00:31:31,200
the channel, I'll probably make content about it, will be setting up an off-site backup

544
00:31:31,200 --> 00:31:34,720
probably with either Backblaze or Amazon.

545
00:31:34,720 --> 00:31:39,440
I got to see which one's going to be, if I'm being honest, the easiest and most simple

546
00:31:39,440 --> 00:31:43,520
to maintain so that I don't have to put a lot of headache and time into getting these

547
00:31:43,520 --> 00:31:45,080
backups set up.

548
00:31:45,080 --> 00:31:46,080
Yeah.

549
00:31:46,080 --> 00:31:50,640
And this is one of those things where the cost absolutely comes into play as well.

550
00:31:50,640 --> 00:31:57,720
I do utilize hosted storage for backups, but I very selectively choose what I'm backing

551
00:31:57,720 --> 00:31:58,720
up.

552
00:31:58,720 --> 00:31:59,720
I have a media server.

553
00:31:59,720 --> 00:32:00,720
I don't back any of that up.

554
00:32:00,720 --> 00:32:02,840
I think it's probably recoverable.

555
00:32:02,840 --> 00:32:08,760
It would take me some time if I lost it, but not worth paying $100 or more a month just

556
00:32:08,760 --> 00:32:13,120
to have backed up in the case that I do lose it.

557
00:32:13,120 --> 00:32:16,000
So I utilize actually Backblaze.

558
00:32:16,000 --> 00:32:23,320
I have an encrypted Arc-Clone drive connected to Backblaze where I shovel my passwords and

559
00:32:23,320 --> 00:32:24,600
stuff like that.

560
00:32:24,600 --> 00:32:32,180
And I think my Backblaze bill is about $1.80 a month.

561
00:32:32,180 --> 00:32:33,640
Because it's really just a sensitive stuff.

562
00:32:33,640 --> 00:32:39,520
So even the couple of dozens of gigabytes of photos I have and passwords and other config

563
00:32:39,520 --> 00:32:42,440
files really don't take up a whole lot of data.

564
00:32:42,440 --> 00:32:46,480
So I'm like halfway there with my all-site backup strategy.

565
00:32:46,480 --> 00:32:49,040
I'm not all the way there, but I think I'm there where it counts.

566
00:32:49,040 --> 00:32:50,040
No, I dig that.

567
00:32:50,040 --> 00:32:51,040
I think that's...

568
00:32:51,040 --> 00:32:55,920
Honestly, I don't know why I hadn't even considered not backing up my media.

569
00:32:55,920 --> 00:33:00,600
Like you said, I can reacquire that media through ripping DVDs and Blu-rays and that

570
00:33:00,600 --> 00:33:01,600
sort of thing.

571
00:33:01,600 --> 00:33:06,560
So I don't necessarily need to backup the however many terabytes of that media that

572
00:33:06,560 --> 00:33:07,560
I've got.

573
00:33:07,560 --> 00:33:12,640
But like you said, the photos, I've got my YouTube video projects.

574
00:33:12,640 --> 00:33:15,200
I should probably back those up somewhere as well.

575
00:33:15,200 --> 00:33:19,160
So I'm still going to have a few terabytes worth of media to back up.

576
00:33:19,160 --> 00:33:23,880
But taking my Plex server out of the equation makes that all of a sudden way more manageable

577
00:33:23,880 --> 00:33:28,920
in my brain and of course in my wallet.

578
00:33:28,920 --> 00:33:31,800
When you're giving me that number or giving us that number as far as what you're paying

579
00:33:31,800 --> 00:33:36,680
for Backblaze, I think that's going to be my first foray into an offsite thing.

580
00:33:36,680 --> 00:33:37,680
I think I'm just...

581
00:33:37,680 --> 00:33:38,680
That was...

582
00:33:38,680 --> 00:33:43,360
I needed somebody to give me a good reason to pick AWS or Backblaze.

583
00:33:43,360 --> 00:33:45,280
And so Backblaze wins at this point.

584
00:33:45,280 --> 00:33:47,080
I'm going to give them a shot into what happens.

585
00:33:47,080 --> 00:33:48,080
Yeah.

586
00:33:48,080 --> 00:33:50,920
I think this is probably a good segue into the next question.

587
00:33:50,920 --> 00:33:56,200
If you're utilizing hosted storage for backups, offsite backups, which provider do you use?

588
00:33:56,200 --> 00:34:03,160
So Backblaze, easily the largest followed by Google Drive, OneDrive, S3, Dropbox, Mega.

589
00:34:03,160 --> 00:34:04,880
And then we talked about this a little bit, David.

590
00:34:04,880 --> 00:34:07,280
The other bucket is huge for this question.

591
00:34:07,280 --> 00:34:09,360
It's actually larger than any of the responses.

592
00:34:09,360 --> 00:34:13,660
And when I got the responses and started analyzing, I was really worried that there was an obvious

593
00:34:13,660 --> 00:34:16,600
selection that I missed and we were trying to think about it a little bit.

594
00:34:16,600 --> 00:34:20,160
And I actually don't even remember what we had come up with, but I'm still not sure we

595
00:34:20,160 --> 00:34:23,840
had a definitive answer for what that other bucket was comprised of.

596
00:34:23,840 --> 00:34:27,360
I think a good chunk of that had to do with what we were just talking about, having a

597
00:34:27,360 --> 00:34:31,000
friend with a solid internet connection where you could drop a piece of hardware.

598
00:34:31,000 --> 00:34:35,560
I think that that's probably a good chunk of that.

599
00:34:35,560 --> 00:34:40,840
Or that maybe they're not using S3, maybe they're using the deep storage on Amazon.

600
00:34:40,840 --> 00:34:45,900
Or it's really hard to say without putting in a, well, if you clicked other, then fill

601
00:34:45,900 --> 00:34:48,860
in this box and then trying to parse that data.

602
00:34:48,860 --> 00:34:51,400
Sometimes other is just easier to parse.

603
00:34:51,400 --> 00:34:52,860
Absolutely.

604
00:34:52,860 --> 00:34:55,920
So we're one section in, we're moving on to our next section.

605
00:34:55,920 --> 00:34:59,680
I don't know what that means for our time here, but we'll keep moving along here.

606
00:34:59,680 --> 00:35:01,040
The next section are containers.

607
00:35:01,040 --> 00:35:06,060
So a lot of people in the self-hosting world, or at least part of the self-hosting world

608
00:35:06,060 --> 00:35:12,880
that I reside in, like to deploy containers, usually Docker containers for self-hosted

609
00:35:12,880 --> 00:35:13,880
software.

610
00:35:13,880 --> 00:35:16,660
And so I included maybe four or five questions about containers.

611
00:35:16,660 --> 00:35:21,120
The first one, do you ever use containers to deploy self-hosted software?

612
00:35:21,120 --> 00:35:27,360
I think it's about 90 to 95% of the responses are yes, which isn't surprising, I don't think.

613
00:35:27,360 --> 00:35:28,360
No, not at all.

614
00:35:28,360 --> 00:35:29,360
In fact, we talked about this.

615
00:35:29,360 --> 00:35:33,240
I actually just took something that was bare metal and switched it to a container just

616
00:35:33,240 --> 00:35:35,360
because it was easier to maintain.

617
00:35:35,360 --> 00:35:40,680
And obviously I think as more people are getting into self-hosting, they're realizing how easy

618
00:35:40,680 --> 00:35:45,200
it is to deploy a container and maintain a container and use a container.

619
00:35:45,200 --> 00:35:51,080
It's often easier than trying to deploy something that's 30 commands to deploy the same app

620
00:35:51,080 --> 00:35:55,440
application that you could do with a Docker CLI and just be done with it.

621
00:35:55,440 --> 00:35:59,560
And I think containers are definitely the easier way to go with most things.

622
00:35:59,560 --> 00:36:00,560
Absolutely.

623
00:36:00,560 --> 00:36:05,360
And there's just a ton of support for containers out there if something does go wrong.

624
00:36:05,360 --> 00:36:08,400
So that makes them preferable as well, I think.

625
00:36:08,400 --> 00:36:13,240
There's also a few different content creators whose entire channels are about deploying

626
00:36:13,240 --> 00:36:14,240
containers.

627
00:36:14,240 --> 00:36:18,280
So if they've ever got questions, there's lots of video resources for that kind of thing.

628
00:36:18,280 --> 00:36:20,780
So just have to throw that in there.

629
00:36:20,780 --> 00:36:25,600
In my newsletter, I always try and feature, I do a content spotlight where I just pick

630
00:36:25,600 --> 00:36:28,960
one piece of software and focus on it for the week.

631
00:36:28,960 --> 00:36:34,800
And as I started doing that section, I started to get some feedback way back when and almost

632
00:36:34,800 --> 00:36:41,360
always, it was people asking if I could add a blurb about how that application or software

633
00:36:41,360 --> 00:36:42,860
can be installed.

634
00:36:42,860 --> 00:36:47,460
And most of them were really just interested in whether it could be installed via container

635
00:36:47,460 --> 00:36:49,360
or not.

636
00:36:49,360 --> 00:36:54,560
It's bananas, I think, how hyper-focused some people are on only using containers and are

637
00:36:54,560 --> 00:37:00,600
very adamant about sticking to software that's super easy to deploy and tear down what needed.

638
00:37:00,600 --> 00:37:05,360
Which I can't say I blame them, but it's interesting how passionate people are about them.

639
00:37:05,360 --> 00:37:06,360
Absolutely.

640
00:37:06,360 --> 00:37:11,540
Next question, do you deploy Kubernetes to manage your self-hosted software?

641
00:37:11,540 --> 00:37:14,920
The responses for this are almost the inverse of the previous question.

642
00:37:14,920 --> 00:37:19,480
Most people don't, which I don't think is surprising because it's a little more advanced

643
00:37:19,480 --> 00:37:21,160
and complex.

644
00:37:21,160 --> 00:37:22,160
Any comments on that?

645
00:37:22,160 --> 00:37:23,640
I don't think we...

646
00:37:23,640 --> 00:37:26,280
I've never used them, so I don't have a whole lot to say.

647
00:37:26,280 --> 00:37:31,320
I'm looking into Kubernetes and the automation with Ansible and those sorts of things.

648
00:37:31,320 --> 00:37:35,760
But I feel like if you've just got a few devices laying around your house, even if it's in

649
00:37:35,760 --> 00:37:43,080
a rack or whatever, it doesn't take that long to log in, run your updates, and log out.

650
00:37:43,080 --> 00:37:46,960
Or to spin up a new Proxmox container, I don't feel like there's enough...

651
00:37:46,960 --> 00:37:51,720
I'm involved in doing that most of the time to require a Kubernetes setup in a home lab.

652
00:37:51,720 --> 00:37:55,320
Now there are some people that do it for the sake of doing it, but I'm not that guy.

653
00:37:55,320 --> 00:38:00,280
I don't have that much patience with trying to learn that right now in my life.

654
00:38:00,280 --> 00:38:01,280
Yeah.

655
00:38:01,280 --> 00:38:05,560
That's probably all those education people from the previous question on why they self-host.

656
00:38:05,560 --> 00:38:06,560
Yep.

657
00:38:06,560 --> 00:38:10,220
So jumping into that question, I feel like we've actually almost already covered this.

658
00:38:10,220 --> 00:38:14,560
Do you prefer container installations to bare metal?

659
00:38:14,560 --> 00:38:19,320
It isn't quite as skewed towards yes, although it still is somewhere around 75, 80% of people

660
00:38:19,320 --> 00:38:20,760
do prefer containers.

661
00:38:20,760 --> 00:38:25,960
And again, I completely understand why they're so easy to build and to tear down.

662
00:38:25,960 --> 00:38:28,960
And documentation is always just...

663
00:38:28,960 --> 00:38:29,960
There's a ton out there.

664
00:38:29,960 --> 00:38:31,580
People are always...

665
00:38:31,580 --> 00:38:36,200
If it's not the developers themselves, there's someone if you Google how to deploy X using

666
00:38:36,200 --> 00:38:39,080
a Docker container, it's out there somewhere.

667
00:38:39,080 --> 00:38:40,480
Or YouTube.

668
00:38:40,480 --> 00:38:41,720
Right, absolutely.

669
00:38:41,720 --> 00:38:45,760
And I love the community that does that, that makes the content.

670
00:38:45,760 --> 00:38:49,040
And it's not even just me saying that as a content creator.

671
00:38:49,040 --> 00:38:53,440
It's looking at finding blogs, talking in depth, thousands of words about how to deploy

672
00:38:53,440 --> 00:38:56,760
a container and all of the little nuances to it.

673
00:38:56,760 --> 00:38:58,040
And these people aren't getting paid for this.

674
00:38:58,040 --> 00:38:59,680
They're not being sponsored by these people.

675
00:38:59,680 --> 00:39:01,800
It's like, I love this so much.

676
00:39:01,800 --> 00:39:04,520
I want to spend my time helping other people do it.

677
00:39:04,520 --> 00:39:06,760
I think it's just a great community to be a part of.

678
00:39:06,760 --> 00:39:12,200
Jumping into the next question, if you ever use containers to self-host, which container

679
00:39:12,200 --> 00:39:14,160
platforms do you utilize?

680
00:39:14,160 --> 00:39:16,440
So I'm not entirely sure why I included this question.

681
00:39:16,440 --> 00:39:21,600
I remember coming across a conversation somewhere where people were talking about it.

682
00:39:21,600 --> 00:39:27,960
And I know at some point I'm a Proxmox user and so inevitably containers in a VM versus

683
00:39:27,960 --> 00:39:31,400
an LXC, what's better, what should I be using always comes up.

684
00:39:31,400 --> 00:39:34,020
And so I thought it would be interesting to see the results.

685
00:39:34,020 --> 00:39:36,720
But it's by and far Docker is what people use.

686
00:39:36,720 --> 00:39:38,800
It's Docker, LXCs, Podman.

687
00:39:38,800 --> 00:39:43,240
And then I have other, which only looks like it has maybe 40 or 50 responses.

688
00:39:43,240 --> 00:39:46,840
So I'm not sure what else people are using for containers.

689
00:39:46,840 --> 00:39:50,880
There's probably some other containerization software out there I'm not aware of.

690
00:39:50,880 --> 00:39:51,880
I know.

691
00:39:51,880 --> 00:39:55,680
I think there might be something on the Microsoft side like Azure, but I don't have enough experience

692
00:39:55,680 --> 00:39:59,120
with Azure to speak on that with any intelligence.

693
00:39:59,120 --> 00:40:03,000
But I've looked, obviously my channel focuses primarily around Docker.

694
00:40:03,000 --> 00:40:04,480
I've used some LXC stuff.

695
00:40:04,480 --> 00:40:07,240
I know a bit about Podman and its name.

696
00:40:07,240 --> 00:40:10,960
It is basically a root list Docker and I've never actually used it.

697
00:40:10,960 --> 00:40:15,560
But again, these are numbers that I'm not at all surprised by, especially with Docker

698
00:40:15,560 --> 00:40:19,800
being so much farther ahead in the numbers than anything else on that list.

699
00:40:19,800 --> 00:40:24,800
I look forward to being educated in the comment section of the communities we share.

700
00:40:24,800 --> 00:40:26,080
That's when it launches.

701
00:40:26,080 --> 00:40:28,640
I'm sure someone will have something to say.

702
00:40:28,640 --> 00:40:32,800
One of the things that I've learned is even though I teach this stuff online, there is

703
00:40:32,800 --> 00:40:36,840
a good chunk of my audience that is smarter about this stuff than I will ever think about

704
00:40:36,840 --> 00:40:37,940
being.

705
00:40:37,940 --> 00:40:41,400
They have forgotten more than I will ever know.

706
00:40:41,400 --> 00:40:46,760
Somebody today actually presented me with the idea of doing the vulnerability scan thing

707
00:40:46,760 --> 00:40:48,840
and I'm going to make an entire video on it.

708
00:40:48,840 --> 00:40:50,280
But they're just like, it's super easy.

709
00:40:50,280 --> 00:40:51,280
Here's what you're looking for.

710
00:40:51,280 --> 00:40:56,400
And it was just today it changed how I look at deploying a Docker container by one comment

711
00:40:56,400 --> 00:40:58,320
from a viewer on my channel.

712
00:40:58,320 --> 00:40:59,320
Interesting.

713
00:40:59,320 --> 00:41:02,720
I think that's why the self-healing community is so interesting.

714
00:41:02,720 --> 00:41:03,720
Incredible.

715
00:41:03,720 --> 00:41:04,720
Yeah, 100%.

716
00:41:04,720 --> 00:41:06,560
Jumping to the next question.

717
00:41:06,560 --> 00:41:07,560
This is an interesting one.

718
00:41:07,560 --> 00:41:13,560
If you use containers to self-host, do you use the management platform to deploy them?

719
00:41:13,560 --> 00:41:18,520
When I initially asked this question, I was thinking Portainer or Yacht used to be a big

720
00:41:18,520 --> 00:41:19,520
one.

721
00:41:19,520 --> 00:41:20,520
I haven't seen much on that anymore.

722
00:41:20,520 --> 00:41:23,320
And the responses are almost evenly split.

723
00:41:23,320 --> 00:41:24,320
It looks like maybe it's...

724
00:41:24,320 --> 00:41:27,360
Actually, I probably should have pulled the data up.

725
00:41:27,360 --> 00:41:29,960
There's a 10 vote difference between these two.

726
00:41:29,960 --> 00:41:30,960
Oh boy.

727
00:41:30,960 --> 00:41:31,960
Yeah.

728
00:41:31,960 --> 00:41:32,960
I'm pretty close.

729
00:41:32,960 --> 00:41:35,440
I actually think I was thinking about this.

730
00:41:35,440 --> 00:41:40,040
There are probably some Unraid users who are classifying themselves in that because Unraid

731
00:41:40,040 --> 00:41:44,760
almost pretty well is a container management platform.

732
00:41:44,760 --> 00:41:51,440
At least it supports managing containers more similarly to Portainer than probably someone

733
00:41:51,440 --> 00:41:57,840
who just spins up Debian or something and runs a Docker compose file for their containers.

734
00:41:57,840 --> 00:42:00,040
So I assume that's contributing.

735
00:42:00,040 --> 00:42:05,400
But given the split again of non-technical versus technical people in the community,

736
00:42:05,400 --> 00:42:07,600
I suppose that's not surprising.

737
00:42:07,600 --> 00:42:10,720
I appreciate that this is fairly evenly split.

738
00:42:10,720 --> 00:42:14,320
When I first started, I actually learned Docker through Portainer.

739
00:42:14,320 --> 00:42:15,320
I learned...

740
00:42:15,320 --> 00:42:18,200
Originally, I went through Portainer and I would fill in all of the little individual

741
00:42:18,200 --> 00:42:22,160
boxes for what is the image, what is your path, what is your port.

742
00:42:22,160 --> 00:42:24,080
I would fill in all of these boxes.

743
00:42:24,080 --> 00:42:27,200
And I was like, there's got to be an easier way to do this.

744
00:42:27,200 --> 00:42:30,440
And then I learned about Docker compose and of course then Portainer's version of that,

745
00:42:30,440 --> 00:42:32,240
which is stacks.

746
00:42:32,240 --> 00:42:37,440
And it was Portainer that gave me kind of the base knowledge to get into deploying a

747
00:42:37,440 --> 00:42:41,820
Docker compose or a Docker CLI without a graphical user interface.

748
00:42:41,820 --> 00:42:46,640
And if somebody wants to get in and wants to commit to self-hosting with Docker, I encourage

749
00:42:46,640 --> 00:42:52,160
them to learn both a GUI, a graphical user interface, as well as command line.

750
00:42:52,160 --> 00:42:56,080
Because there are just certain things that are easier in command line to find or deploy

751
00:42:56,080 --> 00:42:59,320
or look at than it is in a graphical user interface.

752
00:42:59,320 --> 00:43:02,800
And I feel like you get a better understanding of what's going on if you do it in a shell

753
00:43:02,800 --> 00:43:07,680
or in a command line or whatever versus just, like I said, typing stuff into a box and clicking

754
00:43:07,680 --> 00:43:08,680
go.

755
00:43:08,680 --> 00:43:13,080
I feel like your understanding gets better when you get into the shell a little bit.

756
00:43:13,080 --> 00:43:14,080
Yeah.

757
00:43:14,080 --> 00:43:15,080
And I'm the same way.

758
00:43:15,080 --> 00:43:18,920
I learned Docker through Unraid, as I had mentioned, Unraid early on, and now I use

759
00:43:18,920 --> 00:43:20,920
compose files to manage it.

760
00:43:20,920 --> 00:43:27,080
But I completely recognize that there is a place for software like Portainer and HomeLabs,

761
00:43:27,080 --> 00:43:28,960
even maybe for people like me.

762
00:43:28,960 --> 00:43:33,540
I know a couple of years ago they started offering free business licenses.

763
00:43:33,540 --> 00:43:35,400
Maybe they were limited per user.

764
00:43:35,400 --> 00:43:37,360
And it actually comes with some pretty cool features.

765
00:43:37,360 --> 00:43:41,800
I know they have indicators next to images to tell you if there's an update available

766
00:43:41,800 --> 00:43:42,800
or not.

767
00:43:42,800 --> 00:43:45,800
And we're going to get into that with the next question here when we talk about automatic

768
00:43:45,800 --> 00:43:47,280
versus manual updates.

769
00:43:47,280 --> 00:43:51,200
And I guess this is probably about as good of a segue as ever to jump into that.

770
00:43:51,200 --> 00:43:55,360
Next question is, do you prefer manual or automatic updates?

771
00:43:55,360 --> 00:43:59,400
And this is very much like a yes or no question or one or the other.

772
00:43:59,400 --> 00:44:02,680
And in reality, I did get some feedback and it was fair.

773
00:44:02,680 --> 00:44:04,920
It probably isn't black or white.

774
00:44:04,920 --> 00:44:10,840
And for most people, there are probably containers and software that are completely fine updating

775
00:44:10,840 --> 00:44:13,960
automatically every night if there's something going on.

776
00:44:13,960 --> 00:44:17,860
And then there are other containers that you absolutely would not back up, like a database

777
00:44:17,860 --> 00:44:19,600
or something like that.

778
00:44:19,600 --> 00:44:28,480
And so it was wrong to give users or responders in this survey just the two options and probably

779
00:44:28,480 --> 00:44:30,080
not like a both option.

780
00:44:30,080 --> 00:44:35,360
Yeah, I think a both option would have been good just because speaking from experience,

781
00:44:35,360 --> 00:44:36,920
I am in the both category.

782
00:44:36,920 --> 00:44:41,320
Like you said, I will not have a database automatically update.

783
00:44:41,320 --> 00:44:46,320
I did that one time and I didn't have a backup and I lost everything.

784
00:44:46,320 --> 00:44:49,280
And the data was just gone.

785
00:44:49,280 --> 00:44:55,440
And since then, I've implemented backup strategies and I've implemented update strategies.

786
00:44:55,440 --> 00:45:02,560
And like you said, if my pie hole or my ad guard or any of the Rs, those just automatically

787
00:45:02,560 --> 00:45:03,560
update.

788
00:45:03,560 --> 00:45:04,560
I don't care.

789
00:45:04,560 --> 00:45:08,240
If that crashes, I spin it back up and there's no data lost.

790
00:45:08,240 --> 00:45:13,840
But if my password manager doesn't get an automatic backup or an automatic update, those

791
00:45:13,840 --> 00:45:17,340
sorts of things, I want to go in and make sure that the update makes sense or should

792
00:45:17,340 --> 00:45:20,000
I wait till the next update to fix something else.

793
00:45:20,000 --> 00:45:23,320
So I kind of pick and choose what automatically updates and what doesn't.

794
00:45:23,320 --> 00:45:26,920
I think next time you do the survey, definitely have yes, no, or both.

795
00:45:26,920 --> 00:45:28,440
Yep, I definitely will.

796
00:45:28,440 --> 00:45:32,080
And I think that's reasonable, especially given how many people are doing this as a

797
00:45:32,080 --> 00:45:37,960
hobby and maybe don't necessarily have the time to monitor every individual image they're

798
00:45:37,960 --> 00:45:40,120
running or they have a container built on.

799
00:45:40,120 --> 00:45:42,080
So it makes complete sense.

800
00:45:42,080 --> 00:45:44,400
Okay, moving on to the next section.

801
00:45:44,400 --> 00:45:45,400
Next one is networking.

802
00:45:45,400 --> 00:45:47,240
So we have probably four or five questions here.

803
00:45:47,240 --> 00:45:52,040
The first one being if self-hosting for personal use, do you deploy a firewall aside from

804
00:45:52,040 --> 00:45:54,240
the router provided by your ISP?

805
00:45:54,240 --> 00:45:57,960
And I listed OpenSense and PFSense as options.

806
00:45:57,960 --> 00:46:02,620
And this was pretty, I'm not going to say even, it was definitely skewed more towards

807
00:46:02,620 --> 00:46:08,920
yes than no, but it was probably more, I know, 55, 45 or 60, 40 or so.

808
00:46:08,920 --> 00:46:11,760
More people said yes than I realized.

809
00:46:11,760 --> 00:46:16,960
And I think that's predicated on the fact that I built an OpenSense box last year when

810
00:46:16,960 --> 00:46:20,680
I moved into a new house and I found it incredibly challenging.

811
00:46:20,680 --> 00:46:25,000
I thought the learning curve was steep and it was much more difficult than I anticipated.

812
00:46:25,000 --> 00:46:28,000
And I remember thinking there can't be that many people who are doing this because this

813
00:46:28,000 --> 00:46:32,560
has been really hard and my internet has been down more than it has been up for the last

814
00:46:32,560 --> 00:46:33,560
week.

815
00:46:33,560 --> 00:46:36,960
As I try and configure my five VLANs and everything else.

816
00:46:36,960 --> 00:46:37,960
Right.

817
00:46:37,960 --> 00:46:42,000
Well, and like we kind of mentioned earlier, you've got a family, you've got a spouse,

818
00:46:42,000 --> 00:46:46,600
you've got to keep all of those people happy while you're trying to configure this stuff.

819
00:46:46,600 --> 00:46:51,720
And if you screw up a firewall rule, well, then half your network or your entire network

820
00:46:51,720 --> 00:46:53,360
is going to go down.

821
00:46:53,360 --> 00:46:54,600
Everybody's going to be upset.

822
00:46:54,600 --> 00:46:57,840
I've never actually implemented like an OpenSense or a PFSense.

823
00:46:57,840 --> 00:47:01,920
I've never implemented a dedicated firewall piece of hardware.

824
00:47:01,920 --> 00:47:09,760
However, I was on Unifi for a while and their security stuff is pretty good as far as blocking

825
00:47:09,760 --> 00:47:12,680
incoming stuff and DDoS attacks and that sort of thing.

826
00:47:12,680 --> 00:47:17,680
But I had my own separate issues that a lot of people have with Unifi and I've since switched

827
00:47:17,680 --> 00:47:19,900
to an Omata setup.

828
00:47:19,900 --> 00:47:24,640
And they also got really great built-in protections that are basically a firewall that I didn't

829
00:47:24,640 --> 00:47:26,080
have to configure.

830
00:47:26,080 --> 00:47:31,100
And I can just say, if these conditions are met, block that traffic and I don't have to

831
00:47:31,100 --> 00:47:32,100
worry about that.

832
00:47:32,100 --> 00:47:35,040
And I can still do VLANs and I can still do some of that stuff.

833
00:47:35,040 --> 00:47:41,920
But with this question, I would still answer no, because I didn't deploy a firewall specifically,

834
00:47:41,920 --> 00:47:46,200
but my software, my router has that kind of functionality built in.

835
00:47:46,200 --> 00:47:52,960
So, it's definitely one of those kind of yes, no, or something else, I think kind of things.

836
00:47:52,960 --> 00:47:55,400
But I don't know how you would word that something else.

837
00:47:55,400 --> 00:47:58,200
Yeah, I'll give it some thought, but I completely understand.

838
00:47:58,200 --> 00:48:00,440
I actually have Omata devices myself.

839
00:48:00,440 --> 00:48:02,800
I run it behind OpenSense.

840
00:48:02,800 --> 00:48:04,960
And at one point I was like, do I really need OpenSense?

841
00:48:04,960 --> 00:48:08,680
Omata seems to have most of what I need.

842
00:48:08,680 --> 00:48:11,920
And at one point I considered abandoning it, but I stuck through and I am glad I did.

843
00:48:11,920 --> 00:48:15,840
But it's a good point, I guess, for anyone listening who's interested in something like

844
00:48:15,840 --> 00:48:20,940
that, but maybe doesn't want the complexity of a full-fledged firewall.

845
00:48:20,940 --> 00:48:26,280
There are self-hosted solutions that don't require going all out and becoming a networking

846
00:48:26,280 --> 00:48:30,120
expert, although I'm not calling myself a networking expert at all.

847
00:48:30,120 --> 00:48:32,000
I'm trying to figure it out.

848
00:48:32,000 --> 00:48:35,120
Next question, how do you access your self-hosted software remotely?

849
00:48:35,120 --> 00:48:36,120
This is a multi-select.

850
00:48:36,120 --> 00:48:38,120
I included three options.

851
00:48:38,120 --> 00:48:43,440
There's VPN, there's reverse proxy, and then only via LAN, so only if you're at home.

852
00:48:43,440 --> 00:48:48,520
And so, VPN won this one, although it was very close with reverse proxy, and then not

853
00:48:48,520 --> 00:48:51,240
many people are doing it only via LAN.

854
00:48:51,240 --> 00:48:53,700
David, what are you doing with your services?

855
00:48:53,700 --> 00:48:58,200
I've got most everything available to me from wherever I need it.

856
00:48:58,200 --> 00:49:02,480
That said, I'm actually, and we'll get into this in a future question, but I'm actually

857
00:49:02,480 --> 00:49:05,720
using Cloudflare Tunnels for most of my remote access stuff.

858
00:49:05,720 --> 00:49:08,720
And I've got several services that are for the community.

859
00:49:08,720 --> 00:49:13,280
I've got blogs, and I've got resources, and that sort of thing that are available to my

860
00:49:13,280 --> 00:49:17,200
community or anybody who does a Google search and finds it.

861
00:49:17,200 --> 00:49:18,280
They're just easy to access.

862
00:49:18,280 --> 00:49:20,120
They can go get the information they want.

863
00:49:20,120 --> 00:49:21,760
Pages load quickly, not a big deal.

864
00:49:21,760 --> 00:49:26,340
However, I've got password managers, and I've got media servers, and I've got all kinds

865
00:49:26,340 --> 00:49:31,080
of other stuff that I can still access remotely very easily.

866
00:49:31,080 --> 00:49:35,640
But there are multiple requirements that have to be met, whether it's an IP address, like

867
00:49:35,640 --> 00:49:40,360
I've got my VPN IP address, my dedicated IP address there, and I've got my home IP address.

868
00:49:40,360 --> 00:49:43,760
And if you're not on one of those two networks, you can't access my stuff.

869
00:49:43,760 --> 00:49:49,160
Or for certain things, it's an IP address, and you have to log in with one of my Gmail

870
00:49:49,160 --> 00:49:53,120
accounts as in the form of authentication to prove that you're me, and you actually

871
00:49:53,120 --> 00:49:54,680
have the permission to be there.

872
00:49:54,680 --> 00:50:00,680
So it's finding the right solution that works based on your needs, whether it's just publishing

873
00:50:00,680 --> 00:50:05,680
a website or locking something down for very critical reasons.

874
00:50:05,680 --> 00:50:06,680
And we talked about this a little bit.

875
00:50:06,680 --> 00:50:11,760
I don't know if Cloudflare Tunnels would be a VPN or a reverse proxy or a hybrid of the

876
00:50:11,760 --> 00:50:14,160
two, but that's what I use for everything.

877
00:50:14,160 --> 00:50:19,360
Prior to that, I used NGINX Proxy Manager, just as a standard reverse proxy with ports

878
00:50:19,360 --> 00:50:23,700
80 and 443 open, and that always made me feel uncomfortable.

879
00:50:23,700 --> 00:50:27,120
So instead, I hand my data over to Cloudflare and hope that they don't do something nefarious

880
00:50:27,120 --> 00:50:28,120
with it.

881
00:50:28,120 --> 00:50:29,120
Right.

882
00:50:29,120 --> 00:50:33,160
Yeah, and they're audited regularly, so you hope you don't have that concern.

883
00:50:33,160 --> 00:50:35,560
I was sitting here as you were talking, I was like, did I make this?

884
00:50:35,560 --> 00:50:38,360
Why did I not include a multiple or both option?

885
00:50:38,360 --> 00:50:39,680
But it was multi-select.

886
00:50:39,680 --> 00:50:46,020
So I think there are people who probably, like you, do a multiple or have a multifaceted

887
00:50:46,020 --> 00:50:49,400
response to how they manage or strategy to how they manage.

888
00:50:49,400 --> 00:50:50,400
I would hope so.

889
00:50:50,400 --> 00:50:53,680
External access, which is somewhat similar to what I have as well.

890
00:50:53,680 --> 00:50:54,680
Sure.

891
00:50:54,680 --> 00:50:58,640
So moving on, do you use a custom domain for your self-hosted applications?

892
00:50:58,640 --> 00:51:04,840
And this is heavily skewed towards yes, I don't know if it's maybe 80%, 80%, 85% yes,

893
00:51:04,840 --> 00:51:06,120
and most of them no.

894
00:51:06,120 --> 00:51:11,260
And then the next question, if you own a custom domain, who is your domain name provider?

895
00:51:11,260 --> 00:51:13,240
And so you and I talked about this a little bit.

896
00:51:13,240 --> 00:51:17,960
I remember being a conversation in the Reddit comments when I posted the results.

897
00:51:17,960 --> 00:51:20,780
Cloudflare is the largest provider here.

898
00:51:20,780 --> 00:51:27,640
And I know they do provide domain name purchasing and they offer them, but I didn't realize

899
00:51:27,640 --> 00:51:29,240
how popular it was.

900
00:51:29,240 --> 00:51:34,600
Or I think maybe people purchased their domains elsewhere, pointed them to Cloudflare, and

901
00:51:34,600 --> 00:51:40,720
are maybe giving Cloudflare the credit in this survey for being their domain name provider

902
00:51:40,720 --> 00:51:42,960
or who they purchased it from.

903
00:51:42,960 --> 00:51:45,360
Which is maybe I should have elaborated better on the question.

904
00:51:45,360 --> 00:51:46,360
Sure.

905
00:51:46,360 --> 00:51:51,720
And here's the thing, I think last year I made a few different videos talking about

906
00:51:51,720 --> 00:51:56,800
Cloudflare and then some other creators around the same time also started releasing a lot

907
00:51:56,800 --> 00:52:01,600
of Cloudflare related content for tunnels and certificates and things like that.

908
00:52:01,600 --> 00:52:06,240
And I think as a result of that, I think it kind of got more eyes on Cloudflare because

909
00:52:06,240 --> 00:52:09,280
they realized what Cloudflare could do for them.

910
00:52:09,280 --> 00:52:13,040
And I've been using Cloudflare for more than a decade now in different capacities.

911
00:52:13,040 --> 00:52:16,480
But it's only been over the last couple of years that I've started using them in my home

912
00:52:16,480 --> 00:52:17,480
environment.

913
00:52:17,480 --> 00:52:21,860
And I think that people would like the opportunity to just buy their domain name from Cloudflare

914
00:52:21,860 --> 00:52:26,780
because then the DNS change if they need to do something as instant or relatively instant

915
00:52:26,780 --> 00:52:32,160
compared to going with kind of a no name registrar that might take 48 hours to update your DNS

916
00:52:32,160 --> 00:52:33,160
records.

917
00:52:33,160 --> 00:52:37,700
I think if people can just can buy a domain name and do all of their DNS or their tunnels

918
00:52:37,700 --> 00:52:41,640
or everything from one provider, I think that a lot of people are leaning that direction

919
00:52:41,640 --> 00:52:43,440
just for the sake of simplicity.

920
00:52:43,440 --> 00:52:44,440
I agree.

921
00:52:44,440 --> 00:52:50,760
Overall, we had a note in the commentary, there were 192 individual providers submitted

922
00:52:50,760 --> 00:52:52,920
as responses to this question.

923
00:52:52,920 --> 00:52:55,360
I'm assuming they're all real providers.

924
00:52:55,360 --> 00:52:56,800
I didn't fact check all of them.

925
00:52:56,800 --> 00:53:00,280
So I suppose someone could have put in one to be silly and I wouldn't have caught it.

926
00:53:00,280 --> 00:53:06,340
But even within I've charted maybe like the top 15, it looks like many of those I personally

927
00:53:06,340 --> 00:53:07,920
don't recognize myself.

928
00:53:07,920 --> 00:53:12,280
The top are Cloudflare, Namecheap, BorkBun, and Google domains, which I feel like I see

929
00:53:12,280 --> 00:53:13,280
mentioned frequently.

930
00:53:13,280 --> 00:53:14,940
So that's not surprising.

931
00:53:14,940 --> 00:53:18,640
But there really was a diverse set of responses to this question.

932
00:53:18,640 --> 00:53:20,500
It was really interesting.

933
00:53:20,500 --> 00:53:21,920
Maybe it's a regional thing.

934
00:53:21,920 --> 00:53:24,280
Maybe it's where you live, what country you're in, what on then.

935
00:53:24,280 --> 00:53:27,680
I think that probably plays somewhat of a role as well.

936
00:53:27,680 --> 00:53:29,280
But that was a very interesting question.

937
00:53:29,280 --> 00:53:34,120
And maybe more interesting the next question, if accessing your self hosted content through

938
00:53:34,120 --> 00:53:37,600
a reverse proxy, which web server are you currently deploying?

939
00:53:37,600 --> 00:53:41,800
I love seeing this question, people coming in asking what they should use.

940
00:53:41,800 --> 00:53:45,280
And there are 10 different answers because there are a lot of really great web servers

941
00:53:45,280 --> 00:53:48,880
or proxy servers that you can use for your content.

942
00:53:48,880 --> 00:53:52,880
In our survey, NGINX won out, which isn't surprising.

943
00:53:52,880 --> 00:53:54,680
I think a lot of people use plain NGINX.

944
00:53:54,680 --> 00:53:56,960
I think a lot of people use NGINX proxy manager.

945
00:53:56,960 --> 00:54:01,760
And I think a lot of people use swag, which is the Linux server's team implementation

946
00:54:01,760 --> 00:54:03,640
of NGINX.

947
00:54:03,640 --> 00:54:04,640
And so that's not surprising.

948
00:54:04,640 --> 00:54:05,640
No, not at all.

949
00:54:05,640 --> 00:54:09,800
And in fact, this is kind of one of those where we were talking about gatekeeping earlier,

950
00:54:09,800 --> 00:54:11,320
especially on Reddit.

951
00:54:11,320 --> 00:54:15,880
If you use Cloudflare tunnels, there's a good chunk of people who will tell you that you

952
00:54:15,880 --> 00:54:22,320
have sold out, that you're not a real self-hosted because you're using somebody else's servers

953
00:54:22,320 --> 00:54:26,560
to transmit your data and they've got access to your data and they're looking at your data.

954
00:54:26,560 --> 00:54:31,240
And I think if it works and you're comfortable with it and you're not doing anything that's

955
00:54:31,240 --> 00:54:34,040
going to get you in trouble, do what works for you.

956
00:54:34,040 --> 00:54:37,760
Like I said, I've been using Cloudflare for a long time, even before they had tunnels,

957
00:54:37,760 --> 00:54:39,880
even before they did domain names.

958
00:54:39,880 --> 00:54:46,600
They were a DNS provider for my website clients for years and I've always trusted them.

959
00:54:46,600 --> 00:54:49,600
I've never run into any nefarious stuff with them.

960
00:54:49,600 --> 00:54:50,600
I've never had an account.

961
00:54:50,600 --> 00:54:55,080
In fact, I used to make my clients use them to obfuscate the IP address of my server from

962
00:54:55,080 --> 00:54:58,880
their domain as another layer of protection for both of us.

963
00:54:58,880 --> 00:55:01,600
And that's why I've been using them for so long is they've always worked and I've never

964
00:55:01,600 --> 00:55:02,760
had an issue with them.

965
00:55:02,760 --> 00:55:03,760
Yeah.

966
00:55:03,760 --> 00:55:05,240
I mean, I think the company and I think tunnels are great.

967
00:55:05,240 --> 00:55:09,160
I don't think the dig on anyone using them personally myself either.

968
00:55:09,160 --> 00:55:13,240
I think no one can self-host every aspect of their infrastructure.

969
00:55:13,240 --> 00:55:18,720
So even if you don't consider that self-hosted, I don't think that makes you a not a self

970
00:55:18,720 --> 00:55:20,160
or makes someone not a self-host.

971
00:55:20,160 --> 00:55:21,160
Right.

972
00:55:21,160 --> 00:55:22,160
I 100% agree with that.

973
00:55:22,160 --> 00:55:25,400
In the responses, traffic was second, which we talked a little bit about.

974
00:55:25,400 --> 00:55:30,520
I think traffic is for masochists or maybe people who are a little more willing to put

975
00:55:30,520 --> 00:55:31,520
in the time to learn.

976
00:55:31,520 --> 00:55:35,840
I tried it once and struggled and ended up with caddy and I love caddy.

977
00:55:35,840 --> 00:55:42,640
I use it for my internal search so I can get HTTPS at home without having to have a public

978
00:55:42,640 --> 00:55:45,400
sub domain that can be accessible outside of my network.

979
00:55:45,400 --> 00:55:47,160
But again, all of these are great.

980
00:55:47,160 --> 00:55:52,080
The order for, I guess for anyone not looking at these charts, it's Nginx traffic, CloudFlare

981
00:55:52,080 --> 00:55:56,400
tunnels, caddy, Apache, HA proxy, and then there's a small other bucket.

982
00:55:56,400 --> 00:55:58,120
So a lot of interesting responses there.

983
00:55:58,120 --> 00:55:59,120
Yeah.

984
00:55:59,120 --> 00:56:02,120
So we've arrived to the next section, so we're the second last section.

985
00:56:02,120 --> 00:56:03,760
We are making it through this.

986
00:56:03,760 --> 00:56:05,320
And second last one is software.

987
00:56:05,320 --> 00:56:10,360
So some more targeted questions, maybe specifically about software and types of software.

988
00:56:10,360 --> 00:56:14,080
The first one, are you self-hosting your own email server?

989
00:56:14,080 --> 00:56:18,480
This one was surprising and only that there are a lot of people who said no.

990
00:56:18,480 --> 00:56:22,800
Most people, it looks like maybe 80% of the responses were no.

991
00:56:22,800 --> 00:56:28,680
I'm surprised not more than that were no because I feel like I always see people discouraging

992
00:56:28,680 --> 00:56:31,760
others from self-hosting the email, given the complexity.

993
00:56:31,760 --> 00:56:32,760
Yeah.

994
00:56:32,760 --> 00:56:36,040
And I think this goes back to your previous comment of you kind of have to be a masochist

995
00:56:36,040 --> 00:56:43,320
in order to actually self-host an email server in a home lab on premises, whatever.

996
00:56:43,320 --> 00:56:48,800
There are so many different things that can go wrong and it can take a considerable amount

997
00:56:48,800 --> 00:56:52,520
of time to fix them for things that are outside your control.

998
00:56:52,520 --> 00:56:56,840
If somehow your IP address gets compromised, you either have to get a new IP address or

999
00:56:56,840 --> 00:56:59,740
you have to go and prove that you didn't do that.

1000
00:56:59,740 --> 00:57:02,620
And both of those can be time consuming or costly.

1001
00:57:02,620 --> 00:57:06,320
And again, like I mentioned earlier, if you can find a solution that isn't hosted, if

1002
00:57:06,320 --> 00:57:12,600
it's a third party, whether it's Google or any of the email providers that are out there,

1003
00:57:12,600 --> 00:57:17,040
if it works and you're comfortable with it, that's the route that I like to go because

1004
00:57:17,040 --> 00:57:19,520
there's a time and place for certain things.

1005
00:57:19,520 --> 00:57:24,240
And if you've got that much time and effort to host an email server, I'm proud of you.

1006
00:57:24,240 --> 00:57:25,240
But I don't.

1007
00:57:25,240 --> 00:57:29,760
I don't have that much brain space to keep on top of a server like that and make sure

1008
00:57:29,760 --> 00:57:33,480
that it keeps working and I don't miss an opportunity that I might get via email.

1009
00:57:33,480 --> 00:57:35,160
It's just, it isn't worth it to me.

1010
00:57:35,160 --> 00:57:36,160
Absolutely.

1011
00:57:36,160 --> 00:57:41,440
There's just a lot of important things flowing through email and missing out on something

1012
00:57:41,440 --> 00:57:44,840
is definitely to me also not worth the risk.

1013
00:57:44,840 --> 00:57:49,600
What I find hilarious is when someone online in whatever community will ask if they should

1014
00:57:49,600 --> 00:57:53,960
self-host email, you'll always get maybe 90% of the answers of people saying, hey, don't

1015
00:57:53,960 --> 00:57:55,880
go through the effort, it's not worth it.

1016
00:57:55,880 --> 00:57:59,840
And then you'll always get one user who comes in and is like, yeah, I've been self-hosting

1017
00:57:59,840 --> 00:58:03,000
since the 80s and I've always self-hosted my email.

1018
00:58:03,000 --> 00:58:05,880
I spend five minutes a week doing it and I have no problems with it.

1019
00:58:05,880 --> 00:58:06,880
You should be fine.

1020
00:58:06,880 --> 00:58:08,280
And it's just hilarious.

1021
00:58:08,280 --> 00:58:11,760
There's always that one person who doesn't seem to have those problems, but they're probably

1022
00:58:11,760 --> 00:58:13,000
the one in a million.

1023
00:58:13,000 --> 00:58:16,360
They have a very special mindset that it just makes sense.

1024
00:58:16,360 --> 00:58:20,380
It's kind of like that, it's in the movie A Beautiful Mind where all the numbers just

1025
00:58:20,380 --> 00:58:25,320
kind of flicker across the screen and that it just, that's email hosting or people who

1026
00:58:25,320 --> 00:58:29,000
self-host email, they've got that going on, I'm sure of it.

1027
00:58:29,000 --> 00:58:30,680
Yes, I agree.

1028
00:58:30,680 --> 00:58:33,640
Moving on to the next two questions both about media streaming.

1029
00:58:33,640 --> 00:58:40,200
So the first one is, do you deploy any self-hosted software for purposes related to media streaming?

1030
00:58:40,200 --> 00:58:42,520
And I tried to keep this broad because there's a lot.

1031
00:58:42,520 --> 00:58:48,520
I know we talked about Plex and Jellyfin for movies and TV shows, but there are a lot of

1032
00:58:48,520 --> 00:58:49,720
people who are streaming.

1033
00:58:49,720 --> 00:58:52,040
Books, I would even include books in there.

1034
00:58:52,040 --> 00:58:54,440
They have servers for their books, they have music.

1035
00:58:54,440 --> 00:58:58,280
And so I try to keep it pretty broad and it looks like it was maybe 75, 80% of people

1036
00:58:58,280 --> 00:59:00,840
said they are, which isn't surprising.

1037
00:59:00,840 --> 00:59:06,600
I think we mentioned, I think media streaming is somewhat of a gateway drug into self-hosting.

1038
00:59:06,600 --> 00:59:12,920
And so I wonder how many of the people who said no maybe did stream media at some point

1039
00:59:12,920 --> 00:59:16,960
and maybe just no longer do it because they lost all their storage and didn't feel like

1040
00:59:16,960 --> 00:59:19,080
building it back up at some point or something.

1041
00:59:19,080 --> 00:59:23,000
Like I said, I think media streaming is like you said, the gateway drug that gets you into

1042
00:59:23,000 --> 00:59:24,000
everything else.

1043
00:59:24,000 --> 00:59:27,240
And it just, what is it like 30?

1044
00:59:27,240 --> 00:59:29,280
About 30% people said no.

1045
00:59:29,280 --> 00:59:32,120
And I'm honestly surprised it wasn't like 10%.

1046
00:59:32,120 --> 00:59:33,120
Same.

1047
00:59:33,120 --> 00:59:37,140
And then jumping into the next one, if self-hosting media, which media server do you deploy to

1048
00:59:37,140 --> 00:59:38,640
stream video content?

1049
00:59:38,640 --> 00:59:40,800
So I tried to target this one a little more.

1050
00:59:40,800 --> 00:59:45,600
And so number of responses, Jellyfin, Plex were by far the largest.

1051
00:59:45,600 --> 00:59:50,520
Jellyfin looks like it has about maybe 150 more responses than Plex.

1052
00:59:50,520 --> 00:59:51,880
And then I did include Kodi.

1053
00:59:51,880 --> 00:59:56,280
I don't necessarily consider it a media server, but I think a lot of people use it in place

1054
00:59:56,280 --> 01:00:00,920
of Jellyfin and Plex because they don't stream their video outside of their house.

1055
01:00:00,920 --> 01:00:03,240
And then I have NBN, then there's another option.

1056
01:00:03,240 --> 01:00:06,320
I know there's some other media streaming servers.

1057
01:00:06,320 --> 01:00:07,320
This was surprising.

1058
01:00:07,320 --> 01:00:13,080
I thought I was under the impression that Plex was probably the more popular of the

1059
01:00:13,080 --> 01:00:14,080
two.

1060
01:00:14,080 --> 01:00:18,920
And in our instance, and it might be the bias showing of the communities I shared the survey

1061
01:00:18,920 --> 01:00:23,800
with, but Jellyfin seems to have won the lead in this survey.

1062
01:00:23,800 --> 01:00:27,800
It's funny, out of all of these that are listed, Jellyfin is the one that I actually haven't

1063
01:00:27,800 --> 01:00:28,800
tried.

1064
01:00:28,800 --> 01:00:36,080
I tried Kodi 10, 15 years ago on an old PC that I had laying around and then switched

1065
01:00:36,080 --> 01:00:37,480
to Plex when I got into self-hosting.

1066
01:00:37,480 --> 01:00:39,760
And that's what got me into self-hosting.

1067
01:00:39,760 --> 01:00:45,280
And then I had issues with Plex and I jumped onto the Jellyfin or the MB train and ran

1068
01:00:45,280 --> 01:00:49,040
that for a couple of years and then started having issues with that.

1069
01:00:49,040 --> 01:00:52,720
And then was just like, you know what, let's just go back to Plex and see if they've fixed

1070
01:00:52,720 --> 01:00:53,720
it.

1071
01:00:53,720 --> 01:00:57,880
And I haven't had any issues with it since I switched back about a year ago.

1072
01:00:57,880 --> 01:01:01,600
And like I mentioned earlier, I think people are very interested in the free open source

1073
01:01:01,600 --> 01:01:06,020
software and that's where Jellyfin comes in, is it's very easy to do what you need to do

1074
01:01:06,020 --> 01:01:07,020
with it.

1075
01:01:07,020 --> 01:01:12,240
However, like we mentioned in a previous conversation, there aren't as many apps for it or for TVs

1076
01:01:12,240 --> 01:01:15,040
and smart devices and things like that.

1077
01:01:15,040 --> 01:01:16,120
So it's a bit of a trade-off.

1078
01:01:16,120 --> 01:01:19,480
I think I'm honestly surprised like you are that Jellyfin is higher than Plex here for

1079
01:01:19,480 --> 01:01:20,480
that reason alone.

1080
01:01:20,480 --> 01:01:23,840
At the end of the day, I think they're both great pieces of software.

1081
01:01:23,840 --> 01:01:25,320
They both, they're pros and cons.

1082
01:01:25,320 --> 01:01:30,680
So I suppose I would just encourage anyone who's weighing between using the two, just

1083
01:01:30,680 --> 01:01:36,200
try them both out and pick whichever one suits your needs the best because they are both

1084
01:01:36,200 --> 01:01:37,200
good.

1085
01:01:37,200 --> 01:01:41,480
Next question, do you deploy any self-hosted software for smart home or home automation

1086
01:01:41,480 --> 01:01:42,480
purposes?

1087
01:01:42,480 --> 01:01:47,200
I ask this because I know Home Assistant is huge in the self-hosting community and so

1088
01:01:47,200 --> 01:01:53,200
when I engage, are there people engaging with Home Assistant or any other automation software?

1089
01:01:53,200 --> 01:01:57,640
I know Home Assistant comes with a bunch of integrations and there's software that people

1090
01:01:57,640 --> 01:02:02,840
use to support Home Assistant, but also on its own like Node-RED or some of these other

1091
01:02:02,840 --> 01:02:04,600
automation tools.

1092
01:02:04,600 --> 01:02:07,960
And this one was skewed towards yes, but not by much.

1093
01:02:07,960 --> 01:02:13,760
There are maybe 55, 60% of people do and then the rest don't.

1094
01:02:13,760 --> 01:02:16,400
And I suppose this isn't super surprising.

1095
01:02:16,400 --> 01:02:20,220
One I think the home automation aspect of self-hosting is intriguing.

1096
01:02:20,220 --> 01:02:26,000
I think that seeing things people do with it can be inspiring and tempt people to jump

1097
01:02:26,000 --> 01:02:30,480
into it and it's probably a bit of a gateway drug as well along with media streaming for

1098
01:02:30,480 --> 01:02:32,460
people who are getting into it.

1099
01:02:32,460 --> 01:02:38,120
Also because you can do it on super low-powered devices like Raspberry Pi or some of the hardware

1100
01:02:38,120 --> 01:02:43,980
Home Assistant I think has traditionally recommended is not more than, I don't know, $60, $75 or

1101
01:02:43,980 --> 01:02:46,320
something to get started.

1102
01:02:46,320 --> 01:02:50,600
And then maybe, and I'm sure the no is probably a combination of people who just hadn't considered

1103
01:02:50,600 --> 01:02:54,320
it or who just don't want to go through the effort because there's a lot of effort behind

1104
01:02:54,320 --> 01:02:55,320
home automation.

1105
01:02:55,320 --> 01:02:57,000
Yeah, I think there's a lot of effort that's involved in it.

1106
01:02:57,000 --> 01:03:02,440
And I think also when you've got ecosystems, whether it's Google Home or Apple or Alexa,

1107
01:03:02,440 --> 01:03:07,840
or whatever, and people are, they've got their Google phone attaches to their Google Home

1108
01:03:07,840 --> 01:03:11,800
Assistant that attaches to everything in their house.

1109
01:03:11,800 --> 01:03:16,920
I think for, again, trying to keep the family happy, trying to keep the members of the family

1110
01:03:16,920 --> 01:03:21,360
who are using the service happy, I think sometimes as simple as better.

1111
01:03:21,360 --> 01:03:26,440
But it's also pretty neat when you can manage your entire house from a single application.

1112
01:03:26,440 --> 01:03:28,120
That's definitely where Home Assistant would come in.

1113
01:03:28,120 --> 01:03:33,240
But I like to keep things super, super simple here in my house, just to keep the stress

1114
01:03:33,240 --> 01:03:35,200
levels down.

1115
01:03:35,200 --> 01:03:37,040
Completely understand.

1116
01:03:37,040 --> 01:03:40,040
Next question, are you self-hosting a game server of any kind?

1117
01:03:40,040 --> 01:03:41,960
So this was a yes or no question.

1118
01:03:41,960 --> 01:03:49,880
I don't know, maybe 20, 20, somewhere between 20 and 25% of people have or are in some capacity

1119
01:03:49,880 --> 01:03:50,980
and the rest aren't.

1120
01:03:50,980 --> 01:03:52,520
I fall in the no category.

1121
01:03:52,520 --> 01:03:54,360
I've never done something like that.

1122
01:03:54,360 --> 01:03:59,320
I've thought about spinning up a Minecraft server, it seems like it'd be pretty easy,

1123
01:03:59,320 --> 01:04:01,800
but I've just never gotten around to it.

1124
01:04:01,800 --> 01:04:05,840
But it's more common than I would have guessed at 20 or 25%.

1125
01:04:05,840 --> 01:04:06,840
Yeah, I have.

1126
01:04:06,840 --> 01:04:11,320
I've made videos about deploying some certain or some different game servers.

1127
01:04:11,320 --> 01:04:15,880
I have deployed my own game server so that my friends and I could all play on the same

1128
01:04:15,880 --> 01:04:18,440
server without having to have the rest of the world involved.

1129
01:04:18,440 --> 01:04:27,000
I know when I game, I do it to escape people and going out and playing the Fallout online

1130
01:04:27,000 --> 01:04:33,560
or WoW or any of those types of games adds the stress back that I'm trying to escape.

1131
01:04:33,560 --> 01:04:38,440
So I like having my own game servers that I can get on and game by myself or game with

1132
01:04:38,440 --> 01:04:42,080
just exclusively the people I give it access to it.

1133
01:04:42,080 --> 01:04:46,280
As long as, of course, as long as the game supports a self-hosted server.

1134
01:04:46,280 --> 01:04:51,680
But I think it's great that people are doing this so that they can have their private time

1135
01:04:51,680 --> 01:04:55,200
with their friends, whether they're hanging out in the same room or they're on the other

1136
01:04:55,200 --> 01:04:56,200
side of the world.

1137
01:04:56,200 --> 01:05:00,840
I think a self-hosted game server is a very cool way to hang out with your friends and

1138
01:05:00,840 --> 01:05:05,640
share an experience together as kind of nerdy as that sounds.

1139
01:05:05,640 --> 01:05:08,560
But I guess that's why we're here is because we're a little bit nerdy.

1140
01:05:08,560 --> 01:05:14,880
Yeah, I wonder if there's a chunk of people, I assume they're always users who monetize

1141
01:05:14,880 --> 01:05:16,240
their game servers.

1142
01:05:16,240 --> 01:05:20,920
I think it's a good way to self-host and also bring in some income if you have people willing

1143
01:05:20,920 --> 01:05:24,920
to pay to make it onto private and well-moderated servers.

1144
01:05:24,920 --> 01:05:28,200
So I wonder how much of an aspect there is of that.

1145
01:05:28,200 --> 01:05:33,240
But that in itself would be daunting to me because I'm always worried about uptime with

1146
01:05:33,240 --> 01:05:36,680
my users who don't pay me for anything I provide.

1147
01:05:36,680 --> 01:05:40,360
I don't necessarily owe them uptime, but I'm really anxious about it.

1148
01:05:40,360 --> 01:05:45,440
And so if I had people paying me for my services, I think my anxiety levels would be out of

1149
01:05:45,440 --> 01:05:46,440
this world.

1150
01:05:46,440 --> 01:05:47,440
Yeah, I mean, you'd have to have...

1151
01:05:47,440 --> 01:05:51,920
Obviously, you'd want a UPS to make sure even if your power goes out, that it stays up.

1152
01:05:51,920 --> 01:05:57,160
But then you also need a backup ISP just in case one of them goes out, you've got the

1153
01:05:57,160 --> 01:05:58,160
other.

1154
01:05:58,160 --> 01:06:02,600
And it's just, you start accruing that cost that we talked about at the beginning of this

1155
01:06:02,600 --> 01:06:04,240
and doing that kind of stuff.

1156
01:06:04,240 --> 01:06:10,960
You definitely have to weigh the cost benefit of, is it worth my time to put this much of

1157
01:06:10,960 --> 01:06:14,280
my effort into making a few extra bucks a month?

1158
01:06:14,280 --> 01:06:19,320
The next question was more of a personal curiosity as I was building the server.

1159
01:06:19,320 --> 01:06:21,120
I don't think we need to spend a whole lot of time on it.

1160
01:06:21,120 --> 01:06:25,260
It's just simply, how do you prefer to manage self-hosted databases?

1161
01:06:25,260 --> 01:06:28,640
And so I think when you and I were talking about this previously, the conclusion we had

1162
01:06:28,640 --> 01:06:31,400
come to is just use individual databases.

1163
01:06:31,400 --> 01:06:32,400
Yeah.

1164
01:06:32,400 --> 01:06:36,720
But there are a few instances, I think, where it makes sense or is of sound mind to share

1165
01:06:36,720 --> 01:06:37,720
them.

1166
01:06:37,720 --> 01:06:43,520
And given they typically aren't very taxing on resources, especially for people who are

1167
01:06:43,520 --> 01:06:48,040
newer to this, probably stick to individual databases per application.

1168
01:06:48,040 --> 01:06:49,040
Yeah.

1169
01:06:49,040 --> 01:06:51,040
And that goes back to the backup thing.

1170
01:06:51,040 --> 01:06:54,720
Again, I'll try to make this quick, is that if you've got an application that crashes

1171
01:06:54,720 --> 01:06:59,200
and you have to restore it and it compromises that database, well, any other application

1172
01:06:59,200 --> 01:07:03,220
that is on that same database could also be affected.

1173
01:07:03,220 --> 01:07:07,240
So compromising one application could take down your entire infrastructure if you're

1174
01:07:07,240 --> 01:07:10,080
sharing a database with too many different applications.

1175
01:07:10,080 --> 01:07:14,840
So that's to speak to your point, that's why all of my databases are separate instances.

1176
01:07:14,840 --> 01:07:19,280
So if something goes down, I restore to the last known good point and it doesn't affect

1177
01:07:19,280 --> 01:07:21,560
anything else on my network.

1178
01:07:21,560 --> 01:07:25,400
The next question, I think we could probably spend an entire episode talking about, what

1179
01:07:25,400 --> 01:07:28,380
is your favorite self-hosted application or software?

1180
01:07:28,380 --> 01:07:31,020
This is one of the free text responses.

1181
01:07:31,020 --> 01:07:38,560
We had just over 275 individual pieces of software applications mentioned.

1182
01:07:38,560 --> 01:07:43,680
And within the visualization and the results on my blog, I did not list anything with less

1183
01:07:43,680 --> 01:07:44,680
than 10.

1184
01:07:44,680 --> 01:07:48,160
So there probably are about, I don't know, 15, 20 listed here.

1185
01:07:48,160 --> 01:07:52,520
And then maybe just like top five or six, we had Home Assistant, Jellyfin, Plex, Vault

1186
01:07:52,520 --> 01:07:54,760
Warden, Nextcloud, Piehole.

1187
01:07:54,760 --> 01:07:56,400
I don't think any of those are surprising.

1188
01:07:56,400 --> 01:08:01,320
Those are probably, if I sat down and jotted down what I thought the top 10 would be without

1189
01:08:01,320 --> 01:08:06,400
running a survey, I'm sure all of them probably would have made it into the list that would

1190
01:08:06,400 --> 01:08:07,400
have created.

1191
01:08:07,400 --> 01:08:08,400
Yeah, absolutely.

1192
01:08:08,400 --> 01:08:10,520
And I think I agree with pretty much all of that.

1193
01:08:10,520 --> 01:08:12,320
I'm actually really a big fan of Bookstack.

1194
01:08:12,320 --> 01:08:15,500
I'm glad to see that one landed on there as well.

1195
01:08:15,500 --> 01:08:19,080
That's one of the resources I've got for my community, hosted in Bookstack, and it always

1196
01:08:19,080 --> 01:08:21,400
just works and it's so easy to use.

1197
01:08:21,400 --> 01:08:24,040
Yeah, they're all super interesting.

1198
01:08:24,040 --> 01:08:25,840
Definitely encourage anyone who's listening.

1199
01:08:25,840 --> 01:08:30,160
If you're looking for new software or things to run, and especially if you're new to the

1200
01:08:30,160 --> 01:08:32,520
self-hosting community, check out the list.

1201
01:08:32,520 --> 01:08:36,920
I think everything on the list I have probably tried at some point or another, and they're

1202
01:08:36,920 --> 01:08:40,080
all very solid pieces of software or applications.

1203
01:08:40,080 --> 01:08:41,760
Totally agree with that.

1204
01:08:41,760 --> 01:08:43,800
David, we made it to the last section.

1205
01:08:43,800 --> 01:08:44,800
This is the final section.

1206
01:08:44,800 --> 01:08:45,800
All right.

1207
01:08:45,800 --> 01:08:50,520
It's not actually related to self-hosting in any sense of what we've been talking about

1208
01:08:50,520 --> 01:08:53,600
so far, and it's just a section on demographics.

1209
01:08:53,600 --> 01:08:58,480
I don't think we need to spend a whole lot of time on any of these questions, but some

1210
01:08:58,480 --> 01:08:59,620
of them were interesting.

1211
01:08:59,620 --> 01:09:03,400
Some of them weren't as interesting or weren't surprising.

1212
01:09:03,400 --> 01:09:08,360
The takeaway from this is the average self-hoster looks to be in the age range somewhere between

1213
01:09:08,360 --> 01:09:11,880
probably 20 and 49 years of age.

1214
01:09:11,880 --> 01:09:13,560
Those were the larger age buckets.

1215
01:09:13,560 --> 01:09:18,440
They tend to be male, although we did get other responses that weren't nothing.

1216
01:09:18,440 --> 01:09:24,000
They are pieces of the pie chart that you can barely see.

1217
01:09:24,000 --> 01:09:28,680
They're not super tiny slivers, and I think that's really encouraging and great to see.

1218
01:09:28,680 --> 01:09:31,840
Users skew towards the US, which I don't think is surprising.

1219
01:09:31,840 --> 01:09:37,600
We talked a little bit about my website statistics versus yours as well.

1220
01:09:37,600 --> 01:09:41,160
Coming behind the US is Germany, which is always surprising to me when I see how many

1221
01:09:41,160 --> 01:09:43,180
visitors I have from Germany.

1222
01:09:43,180 --> 01:09:48,360
Probably a lot of interesting reasons behind that, but I don't even think I list it here.

1223
01:09:48,360 --> 01:09:54,760
I chart anything with 10 or more responses, and so I think I have maybe 15 or 20 on the

1224
01:09:54,760 --> 01:09:55,760
chart.

1225
01:09:55,760 --> 01:10:00,000
Then I provide a table that's collapsed underneath with everything else because I thought it

1226
01:10:00,000 --> 01:10:05,160
was interesting to see all the countries of the responders to the survey.

1227
01:10:05,160 --> 01:10:06,680
The list is long.

1228
01:10:06,680 --> 01:10:11,120
There are a lot of countries, and some of them only have one response, so only one person

1229
01:10:11,120 --> 01:10:13,480
from the survey was from that country.

1230
01:10:13,480 --> 01:10:17,600
It's still really interesting to see how diverse the crowd is.

1231
01:10:17,600 --> 01:10:24,040
I would say as a total percentage, the United States is actually not as large of a percentage

1232
01:10:24,040 --> 01:10:30,080
as I would have expected given especially the fact that my site and the survey were

1233
01:10:30,080 --> 01:10:35,600
written and provided in English, and I'm in the US, and a lot of my communities that I

1234
01:10:35,600 --> 01:10:39,480
frequent and posted this to are probably more US-centric.

1235
01:10:39,480 --> 01:10:42,040
I'm really surprised and encouraged to see this.

1236
01:10:42,040 --> 01:10:43,040
Yeah.

1237
01:10:43,040 --> 01:10:47,680
We talked about this earlier, OpAir, looking at, like you said, United States, Germany,

1238
01:10:47,680 --> 01:10:48,940
United Kingdom.

1239
01:10:48,940 --> 01:10:54,740
Those numbers line up almost exactly the same here as they do in my YouTube analytics.

1240
01:10:54,740 --> 01:10:59,440
As far as the differences in these numbers, I think it's in that same order with approximately

1241
01:10:59,440 --> 01:11:07,120
the same differences, and it's interesting that it's consistent across types of media,

1242
01:11:07,120 --> 01:11:12,440
the numbers of people who are hitting these types of communities and that sort of thing.

1243
01:11:12,440 --> 01:11:16,680
Unless you actually come in and look at this, this collapsed menu you talked about that

1244
01:11:16,680 --> 01:11:21,160
only had a few responses in all of these different countries, I think I counted quickly there

1245
01:11:21,160 --> 01:11:26,960
was 54 additional countries in here that responded.

1246
01:11:26,960 --> 01:11:30,800
Some of these places, you wouldn't think about it, but of course they're there.

1247
01:11:30,800 --> 01:11:32,720
Why wouldn't they be?

1248
01:11:32,720 --> 01:11:37,960
It's interesting to see that this community is literally everywhere, and I just love seeing

1249
01:11:37,960 --> 01:11:39,840
that that's the case.

1250
01:11:39,840 --> 01:11:40,840
Yeah.

1251
01:11:40,840 --> 01:11:47,000
It's not surprising, I feel like when I'm going through GitHub Read Me pages, I'm constantly

1252
01:11:47,000 --> 01:11:54,140
seeing people or developers asking for help with translations and trying to make their

1253
01:11:54,140 --> 01:11:56,520
software as available as possible.

1254
01:11:56,520 --> 01:12:01,800
Clearly, the demand is there, and so I just have to remind myself, I need to make sure

1255
01:12:01,800 --> 01:12:07,520
when I produce my own content or write that I'm keeping that in mind, that the audience

1256
01:12:07,520 --> 01:12:11,700
is much, much broader than sometimes I'm led to think it is.

1257
01:12:11,700 --> 01:12:16,520
On the flip side, the next question, not surprising at all, if employed, do you work in a technical

1258
01:12:16,520 --> 01:12:17,520
field?

1259
01:12:17,520 --> 01:12:21,440
I know maybe 75% of the people yes, and then the rest no.

1260
01:12:21,440 --> 01:12:22,960
I think that makes sense.

1261
01:12:22,960 --> 01:12:28,320
Obviously, people who are technical by trade probably skew towards a technical hobby, but

1262
01:12:28,320 --> 01:12:33,140
we do know, like myself, there are a fair amount of people who aren't technical who

1263
01:12:33,140 --> 01:12:35,800
do this as a hobby for a number of reasons.

1264
01:12:35,800 --> 01:12:40,160
Yeah, and I think it's great, like we talked about earlier, I love that it's getting to

1265
01:12:40,160 --> 01:12:43,520
a point where we're getting into a self-hosting hobby.

1266
01:12:43,520 --> 01:12:49,120
It can be inexpensive and the barrier to entry with the knowledge that's available has become

1267
01:12:49,120 --> 01:12:50,120
so much lower.

1268
01:12:50,120 --> 01:12:55,200
There's so much information out there on how to do so many different things.

1269
01:12:55,200 --> 01:12:59,480
I'm loving the fact that there are non-technical people who are getting into this, who are

1270
01:12:59,480 --> 01:13:01,720
doing it for whatever their reasons are.

1271
01:13:01,720 --> 01:13:02,720
I think this is great.

1272
01:13:02,720 --> 01:13:07,480
I think obviously, as more time goes on, we're evolving into a more technical existence in

1273
01:13:07,480 --> 01:13:08,480
life.

1274
01:13:08,480 --> 01:13:14,160
I think people have to start becoming more technical just to get through a day, really.

1275
01:13:14,160 --> 01:13:18,080
Whether it's on their phone or their tablet or their computer or whatever, technology

1276
01:13:18,080 --> 01:13:21,760
is not going anywhere and we have to learn to embrace it.

1277
01:13:21,760 --> 01:13:22,760
Absolutely.

1278
01:13:22,760 --> 01:13:27,320
Speaking of phones, next question, what is your primary mobile device's operating system?

1279
01:13:27,320 --> 01:13:33,200
About 70, 75% are Android, the rest are iOS and there's a little sliver of other.

1280
01:13:33,200 --> 01:13:35,760
We were chuckling at this the other evening.

1281
01:13:35,760 --> 01:13:40,120
We weren't quite sure what was comprising this other bucket.

1282
01:13:40,120 --> 01:13:45,560
This is a little surprising only in that I would expect most technical users to be skewed

1283
01:13:45,560 --> 01:13:47,520
towards Android.

1284
01:13:47,520 --> 01:13:54,280
When I actually look at the technical visitor statistics of my site, it's actually fairly

1285
01:13:54,280 --> 01:13:56,400
even between the two.

1286
01:13:56,400 --> 01:14:01,520
I also have a fair amount of desktop users and I'm wondering how many Android users who

1287
01:14:01,520 --> 01:14:08,000
work in that technical trade are maybe digesting my content on their work computer or their

1288
01:14:08,000 --> 01:14:09,240
desktop machine at home.

1289
01:14:09,240 --> 01:14:10,960
I'm not sure if that plays into it.

1290
01:14:10,960 --> 01:14:14,240
Again, I can only speculate with the data set I have.

1291
01:14:14,240 --> 01:14:15,240
Yeah.

1292
01:14:15,240 --> 01:14:20,240
Sorry, I just jumped over to my dashboard just to see if it would give me any idea about

1293
01:14:20,240 --> 01:14:25,080
devices that people are using and not without digging into it further.

1294
01:14:25,080 --> 01:14:26,080
I think you're right.

1295
01:14:26,080 --> 01:14:31,520
I hear a lot of people, even in my discord, people be at work chatting and they're in

1296
01:14:31,520 --> 01:14:32,520
the technical field.

1297
01:14:32,520 --> 01:14:38,240
There's probably a pretty good chance that they're also watching YouTube videos on work

1298
01:14:38,240 --> 01:14:40,840
devices, computers, laptops, whatever.

1299
01:14:40,840 --> 01:14:43,480
I think that's probably a pretty good chance of what's going on there.

1300
01:14:43,480 --> 01:14:44,480
Yeah.

1301
01:14:44,480 --> 01:14:46,240
The second last question, again, we were joking about this.

1302
01:14:46,240 --> 01:14:51,460
I think I answered this as a question just to shame people a little bit.

1303
01:14:51,460 --> 01:14:55,280
Have you donated to a self-hosted project in the last year?

1304
01:14:55,280 --> 01:14:59,560
We discussed earlier, I think it's really important to support the developers, programmers

1305
01:14:59,560 --> 01:15:03,600
who are delivering the software and content to the self-hosted community because we rely

1306
01:15:03,600 --> 01:15:08,400
on them for most of what we have or a lot of it.

1307
01:15:08,400 --> 01:15:14,440
So interesting, the yes responses, I don't know, are maybe like 30% and then there's

1308
01:15:14,440 --> 01:15:18,000
a large chunk, maybe 60, 65 are no.

1309
01:15:18,000 --> 01:15:22,560
And then I did include a response that was prefer not to answer.

1310
01:15:22,560 --> 01:15:23,800
And I did it for many questions.

1311
01:15:23,800 --> 01:15:26,960
This was the only one that I actually included in the visualization because I thought it

1312
01:15:26,960 --> 01:15:31,840
was interesting in trying to decide whether those prefer not to answers were yeses or

1313
01:15:31,840 --> 01:15:32,840
noes.

1314
01:15:32,840 --> 01:15:38,000
And I think I have a hunch, but I certainly won't speculate out loud on air.

1315
01:15:38,000 --> 01:15:39,000
Yeah.

1316
01:15:39,000 --> 01:15:40,240
No, I think it's about 5%.

1317
01:15:40,240 --> 01:15:42,880
I think they preferred not to answer.

1318
01:15:42,880 --> 01:15:47,600
And I think then maybe they were just trying to be a little like, look at me, I'm funny,

1319
01:15:47,600 --> 01:15:48,760
which I get.

1320
01:15:48,760 --> 01:15:53,520
But I think also, I think like you said, maybe they don't want to answer because of the shame

1321
01:15:53,520 --> 01:15:54,520
or the disappointment.

1322
01:15:54,520 --> 01:15:57,840
I don't want to put words in people's mouths.

1323
01:15:57,840 --> 01:16:01,280
Maybe they're just not happy with their decision to not have donated yet.

1324
01:16:01,280 --> 01:16:02,800
I'll just say it that way.

1325
01:16:02,800 --> 01:16:03,800
Yep.

1326
01:16:03,800 --> 01:16:07,080
And then rounding out the survey here, the last question we have, what is the highest

1327
01:16:07,080 --> 01:16:08,760
level of education you've completed?

1328
01:16:08,760 --> 01:16:10,960
I don't think this is super surprising.

1329
01:16:10,960 --> 01:16:17,160
I think it actually kind of skews along with the population in terms of levels of education.

1330
01:16:17,160 --> 01:16:21,160
I don't know that there are a lot of inferences you can make looking at this data about the

1331
01:16:21,160 --> 01:16:27,000
self-hosted community, but it's here and feel free to hop on my site and view the results

1332
01:16:27,000 --> 01:16:28,480
if you're interested in it.

1333
01:16:28,480 --> 01:16:32,960
David, did you have any insights or reactions when viewing this?

1334
01:16:32,960 --> 01:16:33,960
No.

1335
01:16:33,960 --> 01:16:37,240
I mean, most everybody these days has a bachelor's degree.

1336
01:16:37,240 --> 01:16:42,760
And I think master's degrees are becoming more popular with certain job fields requiring

1337
01:16:42,760 --> 01:16:44,800
it for whatever the reasons might be.

1338
01:16:44,800 --> 01:16:48,560
I don't think I'm actually surprised by anything other than the master's degree being higher

1339
01:16:48,560 --> 01:16:50,840
than some college or no degree.

1340
01:16:50,840 --> 01:16:54,840
I think I would have expected those two to be reversed, but I think beyond that, I'm

1341
01:16:54,840 --> 01:16:57,280
not surprised by anything that I'm seeing in this.

1342
01:16:57,280 --> 01:17:00,800
Well, with that being said, that is the final question of the survey.

1343
01:17:00,800 --> 01:17:04,800
I think it took us a little longer than I had anticipated, but we made it through.

1344
01:17:04,800 --> 01:17:07,720
David, thank you so much for joining me today.

1345
01:17:07,720 --> 01:17:12,960
It's been a pleasure getting your insights on some of the responses to the survey.

1346
01:17:12,960 --> 01:17:18,480
For anyone interested, I will leave a link in the show notes to David's YouTube channel.

1347
01:17:18,480 --> 01:17:23,560
If you aren't already a subscriber, please go check out his content and subscribe.

1348
01:17:23,560 --> 01:17:27,520
And again, thank you for being gracious enough to sit here with me and chatter about some

1349
01:17:27,520 --> 01:17:28,520
of these responses.

1350
01:17:28,520 --> 01:17:30,160
Again, thank you for reaching out.

1351
01:17:30,160 --> 01:17:32,040
I really appreciate this.

1352
01:17:32,040 --> 01:17:37,160
It's nice to be able to have, like we mentioned earlier, two different sides of the community

1353
01:17:37,160 --> 01:17:38,160
here.

1354
01:17:38,160 --> 01:17:39,960
The technical but not technical.

1355
01:17:39,960 --> 01:17:43,720
Of course, you're more of a numbers guy than I am, so I couldn't have put something together

1356
01:17:43,720 --> 01:17:45,440
like this like you did.

1357
01:17:45,440 --> 01:17:49,000
I don't have the wherewithal to put together all the charts and the data and parse all

1358
01:17:49,000 --> 01:17:50,000
the information.

1359
01:17:50,000 --> 01:17:52,920
And I've really enjoyed chatting with you and being a part of this and getting to look

1360
01:17:52,920 --> 01:17:54,000
at the data.

1361
01:17:54,000 --> 01:17:57,680
And hopefully, maybe in the future, we can do this again sometime with that, whether

1362
01:17:57,680 --> 01:17:59,800
it's another survey or a different topic or whatever.

1363
01:17:59,800 --> 01:18:02,480
I'd love to come back and do this again sometime.

1364
01:18:02,480 --> 01:18:03,480
Absolutely.

1365
01:18:03,480 --> 01:18:05,440
Thanks again, and thanks everyone for listening.

1366
01:18:05,440 --> 01:18:16,160
Happy self-hosting.