This is going to be a wordy post because the devil is in the details.
For many years, I've been running a fairly popular, fairly profitable website. In the very beginning, some 17 years ago, I hosted the site at home on my residential cable internet connection. Over time, the site grew and got more serious. With the advent of AdSense, it started making money. It wasn't long before I moved from a home server to a traditional web hosting account. But that also didn't last too long. More features lead to unusual needs that are not compatible with shared hosting, so I started running my own server, collocated in a data center. I've been running things this way for close to 15 years.
The data center is about 1000 miles away, so after stressfully using tower computers for a few years (plus computers in general just weren't as stable back then as they are now), I switched to 1U rack-mount servers with features like dual redundant power supplies and Lights-Out-Management. It only costs me $52 a month to collocate a single 1U server, and it has worked very well. But still, it would make my life much easier on many different levels, if I could host the site at home again. I've looked into this, but the costs were always too high and the speeds too slow. But over time they've gotten better and better. I've been in the tech industry for almost as many years as I've ran this website, and getting stuck on a business internet plan at home just gives me that bad feeling inside. It would cost more than I'm paying now, but what happens when they decide to pump the rates up? I'll be stuck with them because I can't easily send the home server off to a data center. The home server will be a desktop computer. I'd have to build a whole new rack-mount from scratch.
I'm glossing over a lot of the finer details, but there's a lot of reasons why hosting at home would not be a great idea. But this brings us to the idea I had the other day.....
Many people use 3rd party VPN services to hide what they're doing online, or to hide their geographic location. But what if I got a VPN service with a static, fairly local IP address. (which you can easily get, inexpensively). Then I could use my faster (100/100), cheaper ($40) residential internet connection, run a home server that connects to this VPN service, and once it did, it would magically become my server. All of my domain names would be pointing to my static IP with the VPN provider.
I let this idea bounce around in my head for a day and it really seems great. Lots of Pros! The cost of home internet, plus the VPN account would be cheaper than my collocation alone. It would be running off of 100/100 internet, so it would be very fast. I wouldn't need a fancy rackmount server with dual power supplies. I could keep a usb clone of my server's HD and in a pinch, boot any computer I had handy off that drive and let it become the server, just as soon as it connects to the VPN. Backing up the server would be super easy, maintaining it would be super easy. Upgrades would be easy. And if an upgrade goes awry for any reason, restoring the server from a backup... you guessed it... super easy since it's local.
In theory, I could even move the server around. If I used a laptop for example, I could take the computer over my mothers house, connect it to the VPN, and minus the 10 minute driving downtime, I'd now be hosting everything right out of her house instead of mine. I could take the whole server on vacation with me! Silly ideas like that (that I would probably never do) show a very interesting level of flexibility this system would give me.
I'm falling in love with the idea of running this server at home, through a VPN tunnel.
But it also makes me nervous. I've never used a VPN in this way. It seems like it should work, but it would have to work perfectly. The VPN would have to be connected 24/7. If it ever got knocked off, it would have to instantly auto-reconnect. My lack of experience is where this thread comes in.
I'm hoping to get some input and feedback from anyone who has done this before... if there are any of you?
But I'm also interesting in hearing from anyone that works extensively or at least regularly with VPNs.
I'm not talking about "I use a cheap VPN to torrent through". Not interested in that.
But if you have any experience running VPNs as an admin, or using them in a more professional setting, I'd like to hear your input on this idea!
For many years, I've been running a fairly popular, fairly profitable website. In the very beginning, some 17 years ago, I hosted the site at home on my residential cable internet connection. Over time, the site grew and got more serious. With the advent of AdSense, it started making money. It wasn't long before I moved from a home server to a traditional web hosting account. But that also didn't last too long. More features lead to unusual needs that are not compatible with shared hosting, so I started running my own server, collocated in a data center. I've been running things this way for close to 15 years.
The data center is about 1000 miles away, so after stressfully using tower computers for a few years (plus computers in general just weren't as stable back then as they are now), I switched to 1U rack-mount servers with features like dual redundant power supplies and Lights-Out-Management. It only costs me $52 a month to collocate a single 1U server, and it has worked very well. But still, it would make my life much easier on many different levels, if I could host the site at home again. I've looked into this, but the costs were always too high and the speeds too slow. But over time they've gotten better and better. I've been in the tech industry for almost as many years as I've ran this website, and getting stuck on a business internet plan at home just gives me that bad feeling inside. It would cost more than I'm paying now, but what happens when they decide to pump the rates up? I'll be stuck with them because I can't easily send the home server off to a data center. The home server will be a desktop computer. I'd have to build a whole new rack-mount from scratch.
I'm glossing over a lot of the finer details, but there's a lot of reasons why hosting at home would not be a great idea. But this brings us to the idea I had the other day.....
Many people use 3rd party VPN services to hide what they're doing online, or to hide their geographic location. But what if I got a VPN service with a static, fairly local IP address. (which you can easily get, inexpensively). Then I could use my faster (100/100), cheaper ($40) residential internet connection, run a home server that connects to this VPN service, and once it did, it would magically become my server. All of my domain names would be pointing to my static IP with the VPN provider.
I let this idea bounce around in my head for a day and it really seems great. Lots of Pros! The cost of home internet, plus the VPN account would be cheaper than my collocation alone. It would be running off of 100/100 internet, so it would be very fast. I wouldn't need a fancy rackmount server with dual power supplies. I could keep a usb clone of my server's HD and in a pinch, boot any computer I had handy off that drive and let it become the server, just as soon as it connects to the VPN. Backing up the server would be super easy, maintaining it would be super easy. Upgrades would be easy. And if an upgrade goes awry for any reason, restoring the server from a backup... you guessed it... super easy since it's local.
In theory, I could even move the server around. If I used a laptop for example, I could take the computer over my mothers house, connect it to the VPN, and minus the 10 minute driving downtime, I'd now be hosting everything right out of her house instead of mine. I could take the whole server on vacation with me! Silly ideas like that (that I would probably never do) show a very interesting level of flexibility this system would give me.
I'm falling in love with the idea of running this server at home, through a VPN tunnel.
But it also makes me nervous. I've never used a VPN in this way. It seems like it should work, but it would have to work perfectly. The VPN would have to be connected 24/7. If it ever got knocked off, it would have to instantly auto-reconnect. My lack of experience is where this thread comes in.
I'm hoping to get some input and feedback from anyone who has done this before... if there are any of you?
But I'm also interesting in hearing from anyone that works extensively or at least regularly with VPNs.
I'm not talking about "I use a cheap VPN to torrent through". Not interested in that.
But if you have any experience running VPNs as an admin, or using them in a more professional setting, I'd like to hear your input on this idea!