this post was submitted on 11 Oct 2023
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Cost-cutting tips? (discuss.tchncs.de)
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
 

What are your favourite, or least favourite but necessary, cost-cutting methods?

I feel I am spending too many resources on unnecessary stuff.

Edit: I feel the need to reduce both – the resources, to host multiple things on one system, and cost, to buy/pay for multiple systems. Currently, I have 2 ARM VPSes and 1 old MacBook Air as a home server.

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 year ago (8 children)

My favorite cost cutting tip is to avoid big webapps running on docker, and instead do with small UNIX utilities (cron instead of a calendar, text files instead of note taking app, rsync instead of a filehosting dropbox-like app, simple static webserver for file sharing, etc). This allows me to run my server on a simple Raspberry Pi, with less than 500mb of used RAM in average, and mininal energy consumption. So, total cost of the setup:

  • Raspberry Pi : 77€ x 2 = 144€ (I bought two to have a backup if the first one fails)
  • MicroSD 64gb : 13€ x 2 = 26€ (main and backup)
  • average energy consumption : 0.41€ (2kWh) per month

With that, I run all services I need on a single machine, and I have a backup plan for recovery of both hardware and software.

Getting used to a UNIX shell and to UNIX philosophy can take some time, but it's very rewarding in making everything more simple (thus more efficient).

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Getting used to a UNIX shell and to UNIX philosophy can take some time, but it's very rewarding in making everything more simple (thus more efficient).

Yeah, and that's the problem for me. See my comment above. Nextcloud and those services are "bloated", yes, but very convenient. I never worked in an IT-environment, so I'm a total noob.

But stuff like NC AIO give me a whole pre-set-up LAMP stack without needing to know how everything works, and that's unbelievable for me.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Honestly I've worked in technical fields (either support or engineering) for most of my life and sometimes I don't feel like reinventing the wheel. Sure I could combine rsync and crontab and sync files around that way on a regular basis, add lighthttpd for web browser access to the folder, and I do sometimes, but I'd also like to do things OTHER than more work. I know how to do those things, but I don't want to do those things.

Ask yourself what part of this is your hobby. Is it building the thing and making it do as much as possible with as little as possible? Is it getting a self hosted cloud that's polished like Google's? Is it something else like photography or music and this is just the way you want to share or archive that? Those are all three different scenarios and is make different suggestions for each.

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