Own VPS Stacks
Nextcloud, Anytype, OpenClaw. Self-hosted, hardened, maintained myself. SSH key only, UFW, fail2ban, unattended-upgrades. Standard hygiene, pulled through consistently.
What’s running on it
Spread across VPS at different providers, because single-provider lock-in is the thing I’m actively avoiding right now:
- Nextcloud as personal cloud for files, calendar and contacts
- Anytype as self-hosted sync for my notes
- OpenClaw as an additional service in the stack
How it’s hardened
Standard hygiene, pulled through consistently:
- SSH key only. Password login disabled, root login disabled. If you get in, you have the key.
- UFW as firewall, default deny, only explicitly allowed ports open.
- fail2ban against brute-force attempts, with aggressive bans for obvious bot patterns.
- unattended-upgrades for automatic security patches.
- Reverse proxy with TLS in front, nothing hanging on the open port directly.
Nothing revolutionary. Just what you can’t skip when you’ve got a public IP.
Why own VPS
Same logic as the homelab: what’s my data doesn’t belong inside a third party’s workflow that may eventually double prices or pivot. VPS at decent providers cost a few euros a month. Set up, harden, run yourself. When something breaks, I know why.
Why not put everything in the homelab
Tasks that genuinely need external reachability, a fixed IP or higher bandwidth live better on a VPS than behind a Cloudflare Tunnel. Both have their place.