Hello,

I am hosting a shared Minecraft server (10-15 users usually) on dedicated hardware somewhere at OVH. I am considering moving this server to my home. I would save 25$ per month doing this, which would be my main motivation.

I am aware of other considerations (I’ll mention them later) but maybe I am missing something? Is there anyone who did the reverse (hosting a service with multiple users, moving them from your home to a hosting company) and what was your reason

Things I already considered:

  • when my electricity/connection goes down the server goes down (that’s ok it’s just a game and my connection has always been very very stable)
  • hosting at home eats bandwidth (I have 50mbit which is way more than I use, I don’t stream or download much)
  • electricity costs money too
  • when the server is compromised my home network is compromised (handling servers and networks is my hobby and my job, I think I can make it safe)

Thank you for your thoughts!

  • LuckyEnglish
    2•1 year ago

    You will want to isolate the Minecraft server because it is notoriously easy to hack. If you can isolate it then Cloudflare is better than exposing your IP and opening ports at least. Tailscale would require registering each client using VPN so it isn’t accessable by anyone except trusted clients, and you’re not exposing ports/IP.

    No matter what though, don’t let that server be able to talk to anything else on your network or even the admin login on your router/firewall. Treat it like it contains malware already

    • @[email protected]OPEnglish
      3•1 year ago

      Easy to hack: I’ve been Minecraft admin for a while now and never heard about that, do you have a source on that?

      • LuckyEnglish
        1•1 year ago

        I follow various red-team security researchers, like the Security This Week podcast, which has mentioned how easy it makes their jobs when they find a Minecraft server on either the employees network or even a work network.

        I’m sure many of the vulnerabilities come from modding like the recent fractureiser virus going around lately. If you kept it 100% vanilla it would be more secure, but at the end of the day you have a platform designed to run modified code, most of which is downloaded from external sources, and you’re going to open that up to the world? I certainly don’t want that within ping’s reach of my home computer or firewall