Reasons To Pay For Your Own Server

2019-01-20 − Maxime Biais
1 minute read

I’m listing here the reasons why I rent a low specs server from online.net.

  • Host my blog to share my thoughts and my work.
  • Host some of the web tools I made (this could be moved to GitHub Pages since the code is already hosted on GitHub).
  • Host my VPN, so I can use un-trusted WiFi networks (public place, hotel) and encrypt my exchanges over the air to a safer place.
  • Host my DNS server (I use dnsmasq). I use my own DNS to block certain domains for tracking me (I redirect facebook.com to 127.0.0.1 for example). It’s quite easy to setup DNS on all my devices (desktops, servers, phones) and it works for apps, websites, etc.
  • Run Ethereum ropsten and mainnet nodes. Help the network, but also useful to do some blockchain analysis or development. I guess I’ll have to upgrade to a SSD soon, only to run a mainnet node.
  • Host my mail server, filter spam (spamassassion), to manage my emails @bia.is.
  • Host my private git repositories, thanks to gitolite.
  • Run very long tasks. When a script takes too long on my workstation (scrapers for instance). I move it to my server and run that in screen.
  • Various crontabs script, for instance one to notify me when a web page changed.