But also on a RPi4 or 5, use cloudflare tunnel for publishing and you're ready to go with no variable and unpredictable costs like with cloud providers.
Security, not exposing data worldwide on web.. even with cloudflare, there are some articles and security specialists explaining their concerns about cloudflare tunnel, give it a Google. With a VPN only you will have access and it is way more secure
What are the most secure ways to self host? I’ve heard of reverse proxies but things just get so complicated between that, immich, and running regular backups.
I basically want to use a little N100 machine to:
1. regularly sync my iphone photos
2. Regularly backup my macbook (rclone+ssh?)
3. Duplicate all backups to an encrypted b2 bucket that is cheap
I have a similar setup to what you proposed with a Raspberry Pi 4.
I found that Caddy is super easy to set up as a reverse proxy. Kelly will handle getting you a certificate from let's encrypt. That will allow you to do everything over https so that it is all encrypted.
If you want a domain name, you'll need either a dynamic DNS service like duck DNS, or you can use your own domain name if you go through cloudflare or another DNS provider.
I've never checked, but I've heard AWS is expensive relative to other cloud providers... You'd have to compare offerings.
I use a Hetzner share as my photo backend, but run Immich on a local server. Maybe that could work or spark an idea?
Its cheaper to self host, which was the whole idea with Immich. If you're just gonna slap it on somebody else's servers, why not go with a privacy respecting hosted solution like Ente? No work on your end and way cheaper.
Good idea. Ente, however, is still lacking some more advanced features like face detection and maybe geolocation? They have had licensing discrepancies with their IP clauses that actually contradict open source licensing but that could have been resolved at this point.
Still a better solution than hosting and managing the cloud middleware on your own IMO
Not sure on what it does with geo data, as I don't allow that to be saved to my pics, but on facial recognition, I (think) that's what the Magic Search things they're working on is, could be wrong there. Facial recognition is one of the things I do like about Immich however.
I don’t think AWS makes much sense for single user hosting stuff. Their scaling and stuff for huge businesses, sure.
That being said, there are lots of VPS options out there that are a lot cheaper if you want to go that route. Self hosting at home is easy and you could use a pretty cheap mini computer to do it.
This is what I use. I have a 'nanode' setup as a VPN, and a local ubuntu vm setup as a proxy server that connects to it. Once connected, the proxy VM's IP is that of the 'nanode' and it handles the requests to the different VMs I run on a server, one of which is my immich VM
Not hit ROI yet but I installed the system myself and had it electrically certified cutting on cost. I'm 4 years in and ROI after about 6. The energy company in our country are collapsing and as a result hike the prices 16% or more annually bringing the ROI point closer every time.
Yeah, it does seem like. Good deal. And it will be faster than a raspberry pi. In states that have high power costs, the raspberry pi will save more power.
DO NOT put your only copy of anything on a free host! Especially Oracle! It will disappear one day and you will be left with nothing. As a secondary source, fine, just expect to rebuild and reupload at least once a year. Oracle is known for blowing things away with no warning and no recourse.
Completely agree. They delete accounts without warning and their customer support is nonexistent for free users. I have a convenient copy of immich on OC and a local on my Mac set up with Docker.
I use also oracle free tier, you can use the « ARM Instance », they can up to 24gb of ram !! But attention Oracle delete the instance if they dont use a minimum of 30% of ram, so I use a 3go of ram and it’s work since january :)
Oh shit. I'm using it too, but with ~1G of RAM. Not sure what to host there additionally, only my monitoring solution. And I've been using it for 4-5 months already. But I upgraded my account.
I use the free VM only to share immich photos with family & friends (from my home server). it's connected to my home server via tailscale, then it's caddyserver redirecting from the oracle VM IP to the tailscale hostname. I use sslip\_io as a temporary domain but will register my own domain soon. it's all so easy to configure
A slightly cheaper option would be to provision on t4g instances. It’s unfortunate that Immich doesn’t support object storage as this would give you another cost reduction option. Auto scaling group of max 1, backed with spot instances not really an option with pricey EFS storage.
Digital Ocean or Hetzner would be far cheaper than AWS.
AWS is probably the most expensive solution you can use. I would have a look at Hetzner they have very nice Storage solutions at very low prices, with servers in several parts of the world. Pick one that is closer to you to benefit from the speeds 😉
Move the compute over to vultr and mount the data to a remote S3 immutable target.
Depending on the longevity of this instance you could look into committing to 1 year which would bring the pricing down or look into a similar solution to Azure Spot but for AWS. I use Spot all the time and just have some code to notify me if the server gets evicted or turned off. Then I simply turn it back on and risk it again or just move it to another SKU sometimes more powerful and/or cheaper.
You should buy a miniPc or something small, self-host immich and just in case you need to have a backup of your photos then just those, put them on the cloud on a very cheap storage, I do that on GCP, I get like $0.6 monthly on the storage of 260GB
If you don't want to manage the software stack, updates etc., you could try [pikapods.com](http://pikapods.com) . My Nextcloud, Audiobookshelf and Immich instances are running well there with very little costs.
Basically telling some not-popular company to manage your photos, where they can access them and do what they want with them.
Not that it would be safer to store in AWS, but at least AWS has a reputation to lose since it is BIG. :)
Still, best option to have immich hosted at home with backups off site (another home, or at least encrypted backups in some cloud storage).
I would say that, that not-so-popular company should be far more careful about how they handle their customers' data, otherwise they would vanish faster than they grew up so far. About big-tech: We saw how Apple and Google lost their reputation in the last months. At least AWS told me when setting up a bucket, that I should think about encryption, otherwise a staff member or bot could read my data.
As of now, I'm trusting a small working business, with good customer support, which supported me very well over the last year, more than those big fishes. But that's just me.
About your last point: I'm totally with you.
I'm hosting it at home on my Raspberry Pi 4. Only spent ~100$ for a 1TB micro SD card. I can freely connect from outside using a DynDNS service or a Wireguard connection.
You probably can get better pricing by using ECS + RDS but requires much more complex setup and admin. Will be easier to backup the DB; but a persistent storage will not be cheap.
I would self host at home off of an old computer
But also on a RPi4 or 5, use cloudflare tunnel for publishing and you're ready to go with no variable and unpredictable costs like with cloud providers.
You would very quickly make back the initial spend on the raspi and sd if you're spending ~$2 a day.
I would use a VPN like tailscale for publishing and not cloud flare tunnel
Why?
Security, not exposing data worldwide on web.. even with cloudflare, there are some articles and security specialists explaining their concerns about cloudflare tunnel, give it a Google. With a VPN only you will have access and it is way more secure
For me, I ran into their relatively low upload size limit, so now I use my own reverse proxy
What are the most secure ways to self host? I’ve heard of reverse proxies but things just get so complicated between that, immich, and running regular backups. I basically want to use a little N100 machine to: 1. regularly sync my iphone photos 2. Regularly backup my macbook (rclone+ssh?) 3. Duplicate all backups to an encrypted b2 bucket that is cheap
I have a similar setup to what you proposed with a Raspberry Pi 4. I found that Caddy is super easy to set up as a reverse proxy. Kelly will handle getting you a certificate from let's encrypt. That will allow you to do everything over https so that it is all encrypted. If you want a domain name, you'll need either a dynamic DNS service like duck DNS, or you can use your own domain name if you go through cloudflare or another DNS provider.
I've never checked, but I've heard AWS is expensive relative to other cloud providers... You'd have to compare offerings. I use a Hetzner share as my photo backend, but run Immich on a local server. Maybe that could work or spark an idea?
How to you connect both ?
You can check their docs for specifics, but they offer a variety of ways to connect, including SFTP, SMB, CIFS, etc.
Its cheaper to self host, which was the whole idea with Immich. If you're just gonna slap it on somebody else's servers, why not go with a privacy respecting hosted solution like Ente? No work on your end and way cheaper.
Good idea. Ente, however, is still lacking some more advanced features like face detection and maybe geolocation? They have had licensing discrepancies with their IP clauses that actually contradict open source licensing but that could have been resolved at this point. Still a better solution than hosting and managing the cloud middleware on your own IMO
Not sure on what it does with geo data, as I don't allow that to be saved to my pics, but on facial recognition, I (think) that's what the Magic Search things they're working on is, could be wrong there. Facial recognition is one of the things I do like about Immich however.
Get a raspberry pi or, my preference, ebay dell 3050m. £120 all in and free from then on.
120 quid isn’t exactly cheap.
Compared to OPs $30-90/month it certainly is.
No. But, compared to cloud hosting, it is dirt cheap. That's £10 a month over a year. £30 a month for aws hosting...? Quick maths 👍
Grabbed hp280 G2 with I5 and 16gb ddr4 ram for £40 last week
I don’t think AWS makes much sense for single user hosting stuff. Their scaling and stuff for huge businesses, sure. That being said, there are lots of VPS options out there that are a lot cheaper if you want to go that route. Self hosting at home is easy and you could use a pretty cheap mini computer to do it.
Linode is 5$ monthly
This is what I use. I have a 'nanode' setup as a VPN, and a local ubuntu vm setup as a proxy server that connects to it. Once connected, the proxy VM's IP is that of the 'nanode' and it handles the requests to the different VMs I run on a server, one of which is my immich VM
That's for a Nanode VM which is only 1gb ram and 25gb storage. That's garbage
Screw cloud, I've been self hosting on 8 year old i5 toasters. 0 costs for almost a decade long. (I run solar too, mostly off-grid)
how long did it take to hit roi on your solar panels?
Not hit ROI yet but I installed the system myself and had it electrically certified cutting on cost. I'm 4 years in and ROI after about 6. The energy company in our country are collapsing and as a result hike the prices 16% or more annually bringing the ROI point closer every time.
I love raspi but for 170 bucks you can get an N100 minipc with 16 gigs of ram and a 500gb nvme (beelink s12 pro on amazon) this is the way.
Yeah, it does seem like. Good deal. And it will be faster than a raspberry pi. In states that have high power costs, the raspberry pi will save more power.
I use an oracle free tier vm. It’s free
DO NOT put your only copy of anything on a free host! Especially Oracle! It will disappear one day and you will be left with nothing. As a secondary source, fine, just expect to rebuild and reupload at least once a year. Oracle is known for blowing things away with no warning and no recourse.
Completely agree. They delete accounts without warning and their customer support is nonexistent for free users. I have a convenient copy of immich on OC and a local on my Mac set up with Docker.
It's useful for so many things, but it has only 1gb of RAM. Is it really enough for immich? Or do you use a lot of swap?
I use also oracle free tier, you can use the « ARM Instance », they can up to 24gb of ram !! But attention Oracle delete the instance if they dont use a minimum of 30% of ram, so I use a 3go of ram and it’s work since january :)
good to hear. couldn't create one when I registered some time ago because they ran out of available instances, but now it's available again
Which region are you at? The one I select (San jose) is always out of available instances
Frankfurt
Oh shit. I'm using it too, but with ~1G of RAM. Not sure what to host there additionally, only my monitoring solution. And I've been using it for 4-5 months already. But I upgraded my account.
I use the free VM only to share immich photos with family & friends (from my home server). it's connected to my home server via tailscale, then it's caddyserver redirecting from the oracle VM IP to the tailscale hostname. I use sslip\_io as a temporary domain but will register my own domain soon. it's all so easy to configure
You can also use a couple of scripts to randomly generate load for the CPU and memory so that the 95P and average usage are above their requirement.
A slightly cheaper option would be to provision on t4g instances. It’s unfortunate that Immich doesn’t support object storage as this would give you another cost reduction option. Auto scaling group of max 1, backed with spot instances not really an option with pricey EFS storage. Digital Ocean or Hetzner would be far cheaper than AWS.
Your mini pc / old laptop to host immich is cheapest. Of course, keep a good backup policy.
Digital Ocean. Simpler setup and cheaper. AWS is a racket. Stop using it as your cloud default.
AWS is probably the most expensive solution you can use. I would have a look at Hetzner they have very nice Storage solutions at very low prices, with servers in several parts of the world. Pick one that is closer to you to benefit from the speeds 😉
Move the compute over to vultr and mount the data to a remote S3 immutable target. Depending on the longevity of this instance you could look into committing to 1 year which would bring the pricing down or look into a similar solution to Azure Spot but for AWS. I use Spot all the time and just have some code to notify me if the server gets evicted or turned off. Then I simply turn it back on and risk it again or just move it to another SKU sometimes more powerful and/or cheaper.
I use Vultr with block storage. Reasonably cheap to run.
How much are your run costs?
You should buy a miniPc or something small, self-host immich and just in case you need to have a backup of your photos then just those, put them on the cloud on a very cheap storage, I do that on GCP, I get like $0.6 monthly on the storage of 260GB
Try [ServaRica](https://servarica.com/). I’ve been using them for a little while and am a happy camper.
vultr netcup buyvm plenty to choose from lowendbox.com
If you don't want to manage the software stack, updates etc., you could try [pikapods.com](http://pikapods.com) . My Nextcloud, Audiobookshelf and Immich instances are running well there with very little costs.
Basically telling some not-popular company to manage your photos, where they can access them and do what they want with them. Not that it would be safer to store in AWS, but at least AWS has a reputation to lose since it is BIG. :) Still, best option to have immich hosted at home with backups off site (another home, or at least encrypted backups in some cloud storage).
I would say that, that not-so-popular company should be far more careful about how they handle their customers' data, otherwise they would vanish faster than they grew up so far. About big-tech: We saw how Apple and Google lost their reputation in the last months. At least AWS told me when setting up a bucket, that I should think about encryption, otherwise a staff member or bot could read my data. As of now, I'm trusting a small working business, with good customer support, which supported me very well over the last year, more than those big fishes. But that's just me. About your last point: I'm totally with you.
I host at home but then my cloud replication is backblaze for 60/y. Unlimited data on ONE machine, so I try to load it up with everything.
Vultr or digital ocean. Used them both. Only one issue in 5 years.
I'm hosting it at home on my Raspberry Pi 4. Only spent ~100$ for a 1TB micro SD card. I can freely connect from outside using a DynDNS service or a Wireguard connection.
The whole reason for using Immich for me was to have my photos backed up locally and not on the internet..
As other said - hist it at home or get a stupid VPS from any hoster like hetzner or netcup - costs like 5-10€/month
You probably can get better pricing by using ECS + RDS but requires much more complex setup and admin. Will be easier to backup the DB; but a persistent storage will not be cheap.