Self Hosting

Self-hosting is a legitimate option.

This should be a completely last resort due to the fact that its expensive for you as well. We also want projects to last after you have left the University.

That’s all I had to say about that really.

Note

It is always worth asking the University if they are willing to host stuff, however you will need to phrase it in a way which is beneficial to them.

Static IP or dynamic?

Static IPs can be quite expensive so do some research into your broadband provider. It is also worth noting some providers (Virgin) only change dynamic IPs every couple of years which means that you can basically use your IP as static.

If you are using Cloudflare, you can write a script to ping your ip address and then use their API to change your DNS configuration, which would result in a few minutes of downtime which is not catastrophic for our use cases.

This can be automated with ddclient.

Backups

Backups are obviously essential, especially when storing data on the machine.

Please follow the 3-2-1 rule (minimum please of one onsite and one offsite incremental backups).

It is also beneficial to make sure the drives and backups are encrypted properly and the keys are stored securely (e.g. in VaultTub).

We also highly recommend that you do practice runs of getting everything running again from a backup (as there could be a minor issue with your backup system)