Hey everyone, I’m looking to get into self-hosting as a bit of a hobby, host some websites and learn a bit more about sys-admin stuff.
I just wondered if anyone had any recommendations on or experiences with green/sustainable hosting services?
It’s a bit far-fetched but I remember a website I found a while back that was fully hosted using solar energy (yes it went down at times).
Thanks for any help!
https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/
Is likely the one you meant.
Most professional data-centers will claim some sort of eco lable or running on 100% renewable, at least in Europe, but that means little if they still use a lot of electricity and thus displace other consumers to fossil fuel power.
The most sustainable is to host on a low powered device from home. We have a community with a special focus on that here: https://slrpnk.net/c/selfhosting
Ah thanks for linking through to the other community — I’ll definitely check it out, currently I’m mentally preparing to undertake such a thing.
I’m hosting al my services on an old Android mobile with termux. Power consumption is ridiculous, not 100% sustainable but it is very low power. You could add solar panels and you’re done. In terms of performance, mainly for family use, I’ve never had an issue once I plugged it to an ethernet port.
Mind telling us more about this please? What services are you running and how? Docker?
No Docker unfortunately, it would require either to recompile the mobile Kernel or use QEMU and I believe it would have a big impact on the performances. Basically this time the approach was: what can I do with an old mobile without rooting or anything. Hardware:
- Samsung S20
- USB3 to Ethernet & charger port
- 128GB SD card
Sofrware:
- Termux (android app)
- SSH (OpenSSH in Termux)
- Rclone (in Termux)
- Sonarr, Radarr, Lidarr, Prowlarr (in proot-distro)
- Transmission (in proot-distro)
- Kavitha (in proot-distro)
- Podgrab (in proot-distro)
- Ombi (in proot-distro)
- ntfy (in proot-distro)
- Filebrowser (in proot-distro)
- Vaultwarden (in proot-distro)
- Homer with lighttpd (in proot-distro)
Since I wasn’t able to install .NET Runtime in Termux directly, I used the proot-distro (Ubuntu) and inside I’ve installed all the services. Services are started manually every time I restart the proot-distro (unfortunately I’m getting an error when installing Termux:Boot), it’s a simple script so I’m not dying over it. To keep the proot-distro alive I launch is with the screen command so I’m ensuring persistence even when the terminal is closed.
It’s not a clean solution like docker etc. but I’m consuming 5 or 10Wh of energy every day which is close to nothing and probably sustainable with a solar panel.
Every once in a while (basically when the SD is almost full) I transfer the files with rclone to an external drive where I consolidate the files.
Oh extra tip, with rclone you can create a DLNA server so you can serve the files you have download immediately (tested with VNC and Kodi)
The phone/server has still room (CPU & RAM) to go and possibly I could install HomeAssistant without any issue. Also I could add Joplin and Floccus using webdav for storage as I had in my previous server but I don’t miss them.
Any other questions, doubts, scripts, feel free to ask!
Thats so cool! Thank you. I’ll defo be looking in to that
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Were you able to use the phone Bluetooth in HomeAssistant?
(Or do you not have access to interfaces like that with proot-distro? I’m not at all familiar with it…)
Unfortunately I didn’t give it a try.
I tried HA Bluetooth presence detector on my PC some time ago with not so good results and since that time I didn’t gave another go.
I saw a Termux-bluetooth package so it could be a feasible thing.
Here is a link to the website: https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/
At least this is the only one I know of
This is the one! Such a neat execution, thank you.
It’s a bit far-fetched but I remember a website I found a while back that was fully hosted using solar energy (yes it went down at times).
Was it this one?
Yeah a few people have linked through to it, such a neat idea! Thinking I might give it a go with a Raspberry 🥧
https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/
I adore that website, and its sibling No Tech Magazine.
Haven’t really tinkered with anything similar to be honest, but it should be doable. Figure out your software stack, find the lowest power consuming platform you can afford with enough performance to meet your needs, then power it with whatever green energy you can get. There are many commercial solutions for solar+battery combination.
My approach would be a raspberry pi, a power bank and a usb solar panel, I’m curious what kind of experience it would provide.
I am well and truly down the rabbit hole — why shouldn’t I build a raspberry pi cluster and learn k3s? ☠
Solar panels, inverter that works with HomeAssistant that tells your UPS to turn off your server when your batteries are low.
That’s actually a neat idea.
Personally I have been using DigitalOcean for many years. They have never let me down, but of course aren’t solar powered.
The ease of use is definitely tempting, being truly self-hosted is also tempting too.
