Please Don't Sell Space in Your Homelab (2023)

Summary

Hanging out in subreddits like /r/homelab, /r/servers, and /r/datahoarder, I see this question asked too many times:I have extra space in my home server, how can I sell this for other people to use?My answer (and a lot of other people’s answer): don’t.We’re Really Not Trying To Ruin Your DreamsIf you come across this post, or if this was sent to you, know that we aren’t doing this for the sole purpose of ruining your day. We tell you this because playing with other people’s services and money introduces a host of potential issues, stuff that a lot of people aren’t able to solve on their own.Personally, I work for a medium sized hosting company in their support department, so I see the challenges we have to solve every day. Challenges that you have to solve for your idea to work and not open you up to a ton of legal risk.I promise I’m not trying to gatekeep, but if you have to ask for basic help in a forum, you won’t be able to solve these challenges.Why It’s A Bad IdeaWhen you go down this road, you have a ton of challenges you have to solve. If you play with other people’s data and money, you’re going to have to solve nearly all of these problems.Before You Even StartYou’ll need hardware - “But I already have a server!” you yell into your screen. No, you’ll need more. If you have your customers on one server and it fails, what now? Do your customers just sit offline for a week while you build a new server?You’ll need better internet - Your residential ISP isn’t going to be OK with you doing this. You’ll need a business class connection at a minimum and preferably one with lots of bandwidth. Also, what’s your plan if this fails for a few days?You’ll need public IPs - You need to be in possession of a public IP for all your customers, because hosting customers aren’t happy with CG-NAT. ISPs will sell these to you, but at a cost.You’ll need a better location - Your basement isn’t a very good datacenter. Business want their stuff in places with redundant power, backup ...