What are your favourite, or least favourite but necessary, cost-cutting methods?

I feel I am spending too many resources on unnecessary stuff.

Edit: I feel the need to reduce both – the resources, to host multiple things on one system, and cost, to buy/pay for multiple systems. Currently, I have 2 ARM VPSes and 1 old MacBook Air as a home server.

  • redcalcium@lemmy.instituteEnglish
    9·
    1 year ago

    Running stuff on my bare metal servers is my go to cost saving measure. Why rent 2 VPSes if you can buy some old thin clients and turn them into linux servers, etc.

    • nutbutterOPEnglish
      3·
      1 year ago

      Two reasons, basically. First, I am behind CGNAT. Second, electricity in my area is somewhat cumbersome, I need some services to be always online.

        • thelittleblackbird@lemmy.worldEnglish
          4·
          1 year ago

          Something that is usually forgotten is that cgnats are only there for ipv4. Running your server in ipv6 is almost a safe bet to have good connectivity.

          And you know, these days getting a real ipv4 is more expensive than running in ipv6

        • nutbutterOPEnglish
          2·
          1 year ago

          They rely on TLS-termination. I self-host for privacy, so I need TLS-passthrough. Cloudflare wants me to buy their enterprise plans for that.

          • redcalcium@lemmy.instituteEnglish
            1·
            1 year ago

            If you want TLS passthrough, then the most cost effective option is to keep one of your arm vps and run haproxy there. You can connect the vps and your home network using tailscale, zerotier, or plain old autossh tunnel.

    • Rootiest@lemm.eeEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      Yeah this is probably my biggest.

      Device which things can be hosted on a local server and which are best on a vps