Hey /c/selfhosted! Reddit refugee here with a couple questions on things I’m a bit uncertain about. I’ll try to keep it brief, but I can clarify anything that needs clarified.
I came into a little money recently and I’m coming into some more in the nearish future. My plan is to put some of that into a new server build that I’ll use to host VMs running Docker, Portainer, and Nextcloud for starters. Vaultwarden, Jellyfin, Gitea, and some kind of dashboard site will come once I get NextCloud in a good place (I’m torn between Dashy and Heimdall, so if anyone’s got opinions I’d love to hear them.) I plan to add more once I’m more comfortable with Docker, and once I have a better idea of how to keep all these things organized and backed up.
I have two domains I’m going to use for these, one for test and one for “prod”. I use quotes because all of these things are for me only until I’m confident enough to invite my family. I don’t plan to make anything that’s going to be used by more than a handful of people overall.
I’ve been trying all this with an old server I got off Craigslist which I installed Server 2019 on. I know IIS is a thing, but I’m not certain how or even if IIS plays with Docker, which has me questioning if Windows Server is even worth messing with on the new hardware. Right now, I have a VM set up in Hyper-V which is hosting Docker/Nextcloud in what I’m considering a test environment, but it’s not accessible outside the home. Mostly I did this to learn Hyper-V for work, so I’m not married to Windows Server or even Windows for all this.
The other problem, of course, is DNS. It does appear that my ISP has given me a static address (or at least they haven’t changed it since I moved in 6 months ago). Assuming that’s true, I’m not certain how I’d go about configuring a DNS server at home and making it accessible outside my home. If anyone’s got any resources they want to recommend for setting up a DNS server in-home for this kind of thing, I would love to see them.
tl;dr
- Is there any advantage to using Windows Server to host VS some flavor of Linux or even Windows Pro, or am I just wasting my time (assume cost is not a factor)
- Am I making my life harder trying to manage DNS through Windows Server, and is there an alternative if so. Linux alternatives also accepted
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Windows is just flat out a bad server OS. The only thing it’s really good for is managing active directory. Every other role it could conceivably fill is done better by Linux.
Let me introduce you to Zentayl my friend. You don’t even need to use it for active directory anymore.
In my opinion, using windows server is only a disadvantage. Linux is the preferred server OS for almost any application. You will find a larger knowledge base online for both Linux and running all that software in Linux. Windows really only has a place as an exchange server IMO, and even then you can find a better option probably.
That being said, I will also recommend Debian.
Besides what everyone already said, I would emphasize docker. Just take the plunge and learn it. It will make hosting and keeping things organised much easier.
If you want to go the extra mile, you could have a look into ansible, to make your build reproducible. But it’s probably overkill for now. You’d probably take so long to get anything done that you might lose interest.
I wouldn’t want to host anything on Windows unless you have to, or you want to learn more about Active Directory / Exchange / etc to help with a day job (assuming your day job is sysadmin / IT). Even then I’d do that inside Windows VMs on a Linux / ESXi host.
I personally wouldn’t (and don’t) host authoritative servers externally to the internet. I do split-horizon DNS, so that my internal BIND server handles my LAN, but I have outside DNS handled by someone that has an ACME (Let’s Encrypt) module, so that I can do wildcart certs.
One thing to look into as you spin up services at home would be some sort of VPN like Tailscale, WireGuard, or even something like Cloudflare Tunnel so that you’re not exposing services directly to the internet if you don’t absolutely have to. I believe some of these projects/products let you specify DNS servers so that when your phone (for example) is connected to the VPN, it uses your home DNS servers instead of public ones.
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As others said - use Linux. It’s the defacto server operating system. Windows is clunky and cumbersome. Microsoft even made .NET work across other operating systems, making hosting .NET apps on Linux a breeze.
A super simple (and free) way of exposing your home server to the internet is to use Cloudflare tunnels. That way it doesn’t matter what your IP is, traffic is routed through Cloudflare to your server and your IP is never exposed.
Use Cloudflare for your DNS, and it will offer you additional protection on their free plan.
- Use Linux
- It’s probably not a static-ip and I wouldn’t rely on it as such. I’d use http://www.duckdns.org/ to handle the dynamic IP issue (or something else, https://freedns.afraid.org/ would be another option)
- I’d look to pihole to start with for DNS. It blocks ads and you can add manual DNS entries. If you need something more complex, you can always migrate to something like unbound but pihole is a good, easy start.
- Setup https://letsencrypt.org/ You didn’t mention HTTPS/SSL, but you should really set it up. let’s encrypt makes it easy and free
I really like nginx proxy manager for handling certs and reverse proxy configuration
Migrate from pihole to unbound? Why not just do pihole with unbound to start?
