Hello world!

Beelink EQR6 Original specs

• Processor: AMD Ryzen 5 6600H
• RAM: 2 x 8 GB DDR5
• Storage: 512 GB NVMe

Upgrades

• RAM: 2 x 32 GB DDR5
• Storage: 2 x 1 TB NVMe RAID1

It depends.

Given the scenario: requirements and the constraints, there are some things that I self-host on my home server and other things that I self host on my Oracle free tier VPS. Each of them has its own pros and cons. In summary, my home server has a better hardware and the VPS has a better uptime (fewer network and power issues).

Requirements

• Run as many services as I want.

Constraints

• Hardware/Money

To satisfy the requirements within these constraints, there are solutions to manage and deploy multiple containers on a single machine. You can read more about them in my previous post: Free Alternatives to Heroku, Vercel, Render and Fly: Dokku, CapRover, Coolify, Dokploy.

If you read it, at the end, you would see that I use CapRover on my VPS and Coolify on my home server.

One thing I didn’t mention in that post is that my Coolify instance runs on a Virtual Machine (VM) on top of Proxmox, which is a very cool Operating System (OS) that enables the creation and management of VMs and Linux Containers (LXCs).

Summary

• When I develop/test/learn/play with my side projects, that don’t need powerful hardware but require high availability, like Instats and mrkt, I deploy them using CapRover (or Dokku) on my Oracle free-tier VPS.
• When I need more isolated environment and access to hardware resources, like HomeAssistant and Tibia Server, I create VMs inside the Proxmox running on my home server.
• When I use third-party tools like Excalidraw, n8n and BentoPDF, I create Docker Compose files inside Coolify, which is running on my home server.

There are things that I self host. Some of them are hosted on my home sever in my room, like this site, and others are hosted on my Oracle free tier VPS.

Here are the things hosted on my home server:

• This website
• Tibia Server
• Excalidraw
• BentoPDF
• PairDrop
• Home Assistant 🔐
• n8n 🔐
• OpenClaw 🔐
• FreshRSS 🔐
• Matrix 🔐

Here are the things hosted on my VPS:

• Instats: free Instagram not following back check
• mrkt: free simple market platform

Tip

• https://selfh.st/apps contains lots of free and open services

The long title is self-explanatory. For multiple reasons, we would like to have free and open alternatives to paid and closed services like Heroku, Vercel, Render and Fly. Dokku, CapRover, Coolify and Dokploy could be interesting options.

I tested them on both: a Beelink EQR6 Home Server and an Oracle free tier VPS. I found that Dokku and CapRover are simpler and lightweight, making them a better fit to the free tier VPS. Coolify and Dokploy have more features, but they are heavier. With their admin interfaces, they are a good fit for the home server.

Dokku

• https://dokku.com/ (GitHub)

• Simple, lightweight, no admin interface

CapRover

• https://caprover.com/ (GitHub)
• Good features, lightweight, includes an admin interface with templates

Coolify

• https://coolify.io/ (GitHub)

• Lots of features, heavier, includes an admin interface with templates

Dokploy

• https://dokploy.com/ (GitHub)

• Lots of features, heavier, includes an admin interface with templates

Conclusion

I choose CapRover to run on my Oracle free tier VPS and Coolify to run on my Beelink EQR6 Home Server.

This website is running in a WordPress CMS, that is running in a Docker Container, that is running in a Coolify platform, that is running in an Ubuntu Linux, that is running in a Virtual Machine, that is running in a Proxmox environment, that is running in a Beelink EQR6 mini computer, that also runs a LXContainer, that runs Ubuntu Linux, that runs Pangolin Client, that connects (full-duplex channel) with a Pangolin Server, that is running in an Ubuntu Linux, that is running in an Oracle VPS, that is routed by a Wildcard CNAME Record in Cloudflare DNS.

Yo! I’d like to share my motivations of why I started this blog.

• Document stuff
• Share my thoughts and knowledge
• Publish Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere (POSSE)
• Improve my English

Welcome to Rodrigo Dumont.