I see a lot of incredible homelab setups here, but I wanted to share my minimalist approach for anyone just getting started.

Hardware: Single 2GB RAM VPS (Hetzner Cloud, CX22)

Services running:

  1. Uptime Monitor — checks my sites every 60s, alerts via webhook
  2. SSL Certificate Checker — warns me 30 days before expiry
  3. Website Change Detector — monitors competitor pages and docs for changes
  4. API Toolkit — JSON formatter, JWT decoder, UUID generator, hash tools
  5. QR Code Generator — unlimited, no watermarks
  6. Static site hosting — docs and guides via Nginx

Stack:

  • Ubuntu 24.04 LTS
  • Nginx (reverse proxy + static serving)
  • Node.js services managed by PM2
  • UFW + fail2ban for security
  • Let’s Encrypt SSL

Resource usage:

  • RAM: ~400MB used / 2GB total
  • CPU: basically idle (spikes during monitoring checks)
  • Disk: ~3GB used
  • Bandwidth: negligible

The whole thing has been running stable for weeks. PM2 handles auto-restarts if anything crashes. Total downtime: 0 minutes.

Biggest lesson: You don’t need Kubernetes, Docker, or a rack of hardware to self-host useful tools. A single cheap VPS with PM2 and Nginx gets you surprisingly far.

Anyone else running a minimal setup? What’s your favorite lightweight service to self-host?

  • devtoolkit_api@discuss.tchncs.deOP
    2·
    2 hours ago

    Nextcloud is a beast — in the best way. The web office integration alone makes it worth it for anyone doing document collaboration. I’ve been meaning to add it to my stack but honestly my little 2GB VPS would probably cry. What kind of hardware are you running it on? Curious about the resource usage with the office editor.