Hey /c/selfhosted! Reddit refugee here with a couple questions on things I’m a bit uncertain about. I’ll try to keep it brief, but I can clarify anything that needs clarified.
I came into a little money recently and I’m coming into some more in the nearish future. My plan is to put some of that into a new server build that I’ll use to host VMs running Docker, Portainer, and Nextcloud for starters. Vaultwarden, Jellyfin, Gitea, and some kind of dashboard site will come once I get NextCloud in a good place (I’m torn between Dashy and Heimdall, so if anyone’s got opinions I’d love to hear them.) I plan to add more once I’m more comfortable with Docker, and once I have a better idea of how to keep all these things organized and backed up.
I have two domains I’m going to use for these, one for test and one for “prod”. I use quotes because all of these things are for me only until I’m confident enough to invite my family. I don’t plan to make anything that’s going to be used by more than a handful of people overall.
I’ve been trying all this with an old server I got off Craigslist which I installed Server 2019 on. I know IIS is a thing, but I’m not certain how or even if IIS plays with Docker, which has me questioning if Windows Server is even worth messing with on the new hardware. Right now, I have a VM set up in Hyper-V which is hosting Docker/Nextcloud in what I’m considering a test environment, but it’s not accessible outside the home. Mostly I did this to learn Hyper-V for work, so I’m not married to Windows Server or even Windows for all this.
The other problem, of course, is DNS. It does appear that my ISP has given me a static address (or at least they haven’t changed it since I moved in 6 months ago). Assuming that’s true, I’m not certain how I’d go about configuring a DNS server at home and making it accessible outside my home. If anyone’s got any resources they want to recommend for setting up a DNS server in-home for this kind of thing, I would love to see them.
tl;dr
- Is there any advantage to using Windows Server to host VS some flavor of Linux or even Windows Pro, or am I just wasting my time (assume cost is not a factor)
- Am I making my life harder trying to manage DNS through Windows Server, and is there an alternative if so. Linux alternatives also accepted
The main advantage of using Linux for your homelab is that you will get a lot more support because most folks here run their homelabs on Linux, BSD, or a combination of both. I run my home lab on a combination of both. Windows Server will probably end up really frustrating you and adding additional needless expense.
For DNS, you can look into a couple of different solutions:
I personally just run Unbound as it works well for me. Currently, I am thinking about moving to a split-brain DNS and do away with fake .lan internal TLD that I am using, especially now that I have gotten Let’s Encrypt’s DNS-01 challenge to work properly.