The advantage to using something like terraform is repeatability, reliability across environments and roll-backs.
Very valuable things for a stress-free life, especially if this is for more than just entertainment and gimmicks.
I’d rather stare at the terminal screen for many hours of my choosing than suddenly having to do it at a bad time for one… 2… 3… (oh god damn the networking was relying on having changed that weird undocumented parameter i forgot about years ago wasnt it) hours. Oh, and a 0-day just dropped for that service you’re running running on the net. That you built from source (or worse, got from an upstream that is now mia). Better upgrade fast and reboot for that new kern… She won’t boot again. The bootdrive really had to crap out right now didn’t it? Do we install everything from scratch, start Frankensteining or just bring out the scotch at this point?
Also been at this for a while. I never regretted putting anything as infra-as-code or config management. Plenty of times I wish I had. But yeah, complexity can be insiduous. Going for High Availability and container cluster service mesh across the board was probably a mistake on the other hand…
I get that but the setup investment up front. Wow. I’ve built out my services exactly once (over 10 years now), so I don’t really see the value for myself.
That’s the problem, When you’re running too many services as it is, you will be staring at a terminal at home sooner or later. Maybe you’ve gotten lucky and haven’t been ravaged by the cruel gods of fate yet, but it absolutely happens, and eventually it will happen to you. When you’re relying on family notifications and disaster response, you don’t get to choose when that happens, and sometimes you’ll have to spend a LONG time staring at a terminal at home. And when it happens often enough, or badly enough, you end up not just staring at the terminal at home, but also thinking about the terminal at home, and losing sleep over it, and that’s just not a great way to live your self-hosting life. I’ve been there.
Making the investment in repeatable, reproducible, maintainable infrastructure now means you get to decide WHEN you’re staring at a terminal, and for exactly how long. Even when you don’t make it through as much progress as you wanted to, you can just close it down without any stress, get back to your life and continue from where you left off next time. You can’t do that, at least not without some significant consequences when your server got hacked and is sending spam or your entire server is refusing to boot and you need the files on it.
You may still have to hit the terminal sometimes when you don’t choose to, but it’s going to be less often, and less complex when you do. That’s when the investment pays off, and your return on investment is the goal of having ultimately less time spent at the terminal at home, and that payoff is especially rewarding if you’re good at prioritizing the time you do choose to spend on the terminal at home, to find low-value moments to effectively repurpose for this hobby, and save the actually valuable times of your life from ever having to be used for emergency maintenance.
Very valuable things for a stress-free life, especially if this is for more than just entertainment and gimmicks.
I’d rather stare at the terminal screen for many hours of my choosing than suddenly having to do it at a bad time for one… 2… 3… (oh god damn the networking was relying on having changed that weird undocumented parameter i forgot about years ago wasnt it) hours. Oh, and a 0-day just dropped for that service you’re running running on the net. That you built from source (or worse, got from an upstream that is now mia). Better upgrade fast and reboot for that new kern… She won’t boot again. The bootdrive really had to crap out right now didn’t it? Do we install everything from scratch, start Frankensteining or just bring out the scotch at this point?
Also been at this for a while. I never regretted putting anything as infra-as-code or config management. Plenty of times I wish I had. But yeah, complexity can be insiduous. Going for High Availability and container cluster service mesh across the board was probably a mistake on the other hand…
I get that but the setup investment up front. Wow. I’ve built out my services exactly once (over 10 years now), so I don’t really see the value for myself.
Sounds like you have a stable life and infra needs and either very lucky or really good with backups and keeping secondaries around. Good on you.
Well, like i said, I don’t wanna stare at a terminal at home. I’m running too many services as it is.
Automate the updates with a cron job and use family for outage notifications.
That’s the problem, When you’re running too many services as it is, you will be staring at a terminal at home sooner or later. Maybe you’ve gotten lucky and haven’t been ravaged by the cruel gods of fate yet, but it absolutely happens, and eventually it will happen to you. When you’re relying on family notifications and disaster response, you don’t get to choose when that happens, and sometimes you’ll have to spend a LONG time staring at a terminal at home. And when it happens often enough, or badly enough, you end up not just staring at the terminal at home, but also thinking about the terminal at home, and losing sleep over it, and that’s just not a great way to live your self-hosting life. I’ve been there.
Making the investment in repeatable, reproducible, maintainable infrastructure now means you get to decide WHEN you’re staring at a terminal, and for exactly how long. Even when you don’t make it through as much progress as you wanted to, you can just close it down without any stress, get back to your life and continue from where you left off next time. You can’t do that, at least not without some significant consequences when your server got hacked and is sending spam or your entire server is refusing to boot and you need the files on it.
You may still have to hit the terminal sometimes when you don’t choose to, but it’s going to be less often, and less complex when you do. That’s when the investment pays off, and your return on investment is the goal of having ultimately less time spent at the terminal at home, and that payoff is especially rewarding if you’re good at prioritizing the time you do choose to spend on the terminal at home, to find low-value moments to effectively repurpose for this hobby, and save the actually valuable times of your life from ever having to be used for emergency maintenance.