zlacker

>>websku+(OP)
I went down the self host route some years ago but once critical problems hit I realized that beyond a simple NAS it can be a very demanding hobby.

I was in another country when there was a power outage at home. My internet went down, the server restart but couldn't reconnect anymore because the optical network router also had some problems after the power outage. I could ask my folks to restart, and turn on off things but nothing more than that. So I couldn't reach my Nextcloud instance and other stuff. Maybe an uninterruptible power supply could have helped but the more I was thinking about it after just didn't really worth the hassle anymore. Add a UPS okay. But why not add a dual WAN failover router for extra security if the internet goes down again? etc. It's a bottomless pit (like most hobbies tbh)

Also (and that's a me problem maybe) I was using Tailscale but I'm more "paranoid" about it nowadays. Single point of failure service, US-only SSO login (MS, Github, Apple, Google), what if my Apple account gets locked if I redeem a gift card and I can't use Tailscale anymore? I still believe in self hosting but probably I want something even more "self" to the extremes.

>>thrown+Os
Well, its not a bottomless pit really. Yes you need a UPS. That’s basically it though.

>>JamesS+Ay
Power outages here tend to last an hour or more. A UPS doesn't last forever, and depending on how much home compute you have, might not last long enough for anything more than a brief outage. A UPS doesn't magically solve things. Maybe you need a home generator to handle extended outages...

How bottomless of a pit it becomes depends on a lot of things. It CAN become a bottomless pit if you need perfect uptime.

I host a lot of stuff, but nextcloud to me is photo sync, not business. I can wait til I'm home to turn the server back on. It's not a bottomless pit for me, but I don't really care if it has downtime.

>>bisby+vK
Fairly frequently, 6kVA UPSs come up for sale locally to me, for dirt cheap (<$400). Yes, they're used, and yes, they'll need ~$500 worth of batteries immediately, but they will run a "normal" homelab for multiple hours. Mine will keep my 2.5kW rack running for at least 15 minutes - if your load is more like 250W (much more "normal" imo) that'll translate to around 2 hours of runtime.

Is it perfect? No, but it's more than enough to cover most brief outages, and also more than enough to allow you to shut down everything you're running gracefully, after you used it for a couple hours.

Major caveat, you'll need a 240V supply, and these guys are 6U, so not exactly tiny. If you're willing to spend a bit more money though, a smaller UPS with external battery packs is the easy plug-and-play option.

> How bottomless of a pit it becomes depends on a lot of things. It CAN become a bottomless pit if you need perfect uptime.

At the end of the day, it's very hard to argue you need perfect uptime in an extended outage (and I say this as someone with a 10kW generator and said 6kVA UPS). I need power to run my sump pumps, but that's about it - if power's been out for 12-18 hours, you better believe I'm shutting down the rack, because it's costing me a crap ton of money to keep running on fossil fuels. And in the two instances of extended power outages I've dealt with, I haven't missed it - believe it or not, there's usually more important things to worry about than your Nextcloud uptime when your power's been out for 48 hours. Like "huh, that ice-covered tree limb is really starting to get close to my roof."

>>jmb99+CZ
This is a great example of how the homelab bottomless pit becomes normalized.

Rewiring the house for 240V supply and spending $400+500 to refurbish a second-hand UPS to keep the 2500W rack running for 15 minutes?

And then there's the electricity costs of running a 2.5kW load, and then cooling costs associated with getting that much heat out of the house constantly. That's like a space heater and a half running constantly.