I am trying to capture costs for starting into homelab/selfhosting.
VPNs, search engines, absolutely everything and anything.
I am trying to capture costs for starting into homelab/selfhosting.
VPNs, search engines, absolutely everything and anything.
I am very concerned about selfhosting and exposing my network to the internet. I thought people had VPS etc.
Do you mean a VPN? Tailscale has a free tier, or you can run a headscale instance on whatever hardware you like.
A VPS is a Virtual Private Server, such as one would rent from a provider like digitalocean.com com or similar. Most of the crew here run their homelab off of equipment located in their residence. If a VPS is the path you’d like to take, then that would be a subscription. If you have equipment in your physical possession, that is yet another path. Either way, security is of utmost importance.
Tailscale being an alternative to a VPS then?
Tailscale is a layer on top of wireguard and is a VPN. Don’t open your home to the outside world, that’s just asking for trouble.
Tailscale is a great choice for you at this stage for accessing your stuff from anywhere and not worrying about anyone else. Downside is if Tailscale decides to enshittify some day you (a lot of us) will have to figure what our next move is.
For the casual and/or beginner, it really is an excellent service even at the free tier.
i dont have that much knowledge about security, but would it be reasonable to expose a single raspberry in a dmz behind a firewall as a headscale vps?
i mean it would be hard for an attacker to get past the physical firewall into the main network, right?
on the other hand they wouldnt need to get past the firewall if they take over the headscale server… edit: but that would also happen, if a vps hosted somewhere else, got infected, right?
Tailscale is a VPN (Virtual Private Network) which is different than a VPS (Virtual Private Server).
ETA: Oops. I see your question has been answered multiple times. It seems you are a beginner at selfhosting and trying to get a grip on what’s necessary to start and trying to wrap your brain around all the acronyms. There is absolutely no shame in being a beginner. Everyone in this community was a beginner at some point in their life. So, don’t be bashful about asking questions. I’ve found the folks here to be patient and helpful.
Tailscale is a kind of VPN (virtual private network) not a VPS (virtual private server).
Selfhosting on a VPS can have its use cases (piracy). If you are worried about exposing it to the internet just don’t and ise company profiles on your devices to automatically connect your network using VPN