I self-host a lot of things myself. There is one scary downside I've learned in a painful way.
A friend and I figured all this out together since we met in college in the 1980s. He hosted his stuff and I hosted mine. For example, starting in 1994, we had our own domain names and hosted our own email. Sometimes we used each other for backup (e.g., when we used to host our own DNS for our domains at home as well as for SMTP relays). We also hosted for family and some friends at the same time.
Four years ago he was diagnosed with cancer and a year later we lost him. It was hard enough to lose one of the closest friends I ever had. In his last weeks, he asked if I could figure out how to support his family and friends in migrating off the servers in his home rack and onto providers that made more sense for his family's level of technical understanding. This was not simple because I had moved 150 miles away, but of course I said yes.
Years later, that migration is close to complete, but it has been far more difficult than any of us imagined. Not because of anything technical, but because every step of it is a reminder of the loss of a dear friend. And that takes me out of the rational mindset I need to be in to migrate things smoothly and safely.
But, he did have me as a succession plan. With him gone, I don't have someone who thinks enough like me to be the same for my extended family. I'm used to thinking about things like succession plans at work, but it's an entirely new level to do it at home.
So, I still host a lot, but the requirements are much more thoroughly thought through. For example, we use Paperless-ngx to manage our documents. Now there's a cron job that rsync's the collection of PDFs to my wife's laptop every hour so that she will have our important papers if something happens to me.
Thinking carefully enough to come up with reliable backups like this makes things noticeably harder because not all solutions are as obvious and simple. And it's not something that ever occurred to us in our 20s and 30s, but our families were one tragedy away from not knowing how to access things that are important soon after we were gone (as soon as the server had trouble). There is more responsibility to this than we previously realized.
I have nothing to say about the technical stuff, just that I’m sorry for your loss, and that from perspective you were a true friend by taking that task on after they were gone.
I've given this some thought too and am doing some documenting for friends. Hard to know the answer.
I have paperless photos seafile and a few other things copying to a usb drive nightly that my spouse may remember to grab unencrypted. I'm tempted to throw a 2tb ssd in her laptop to just mirror it too. But access my nas let alone setting it up somewhere else after a move or with new network equipment, email hosting for our domain, domain registration are all going to be voodoo to my spouse without some guidance. I'm tempted to switch to bitwarden proper instead of self hosted too.
That's why you really need to rethink your 'if you are hearing this I musta croaked' procedure.
Thing is, 99% of the files on your NAS and whatever never would be accessed after your death. And anything of importance should be accessible even if you are alive but incapacitated but your NAS is dead.
So the best thing to do is to make a list of Very Important Documents and have it in the printed form in two locations, eg your house for the immediate access and someone's parents who are close enough. And update it every year, with a calendar reminder in both of yours calendars. You can throw a flash drive[0] there too, with the files which can't be printed but you think they have a sentimental value.
[0] personally I don't believe SSDs are for the task of the long term storage, but flash drives I've seen to survive at least 5 years
For sure. Good advice. It's a fool dream to think almost anything has value for more than pennies on the dollar or access after one passes as many of us have learned cleaning out elderly parents homes and estates.
For what it's worth: my solution is having an external USB plugged into the NAS that gets nightly rsync'd copies of photos, phone backups, paperless' PDF archive and seafile's contents in a regular folder. Few people know to grab it. The second part is our laptops keep a copy of seafile's contents (all our documents and another flat file paperless backup in it). A few of my friends and a txt file on that drive have a list of stuff that will break in the midterm, namely: email hosting, domain renewal.
A few things on my todo list are: probably stop self hosting calendar/contacts one day, put a large SSD in her laptop so it syncs the photo share from the NAS, switch to paid bitwarden instead of self hosted.
Other things are gravy. My accountant and lawyer can figure out business stuff, corporate liquidation, and life insurance. Funny you say that about SSDs, just in the last day my <1 year old 990 is having issues.
Data recovery instructions can be documented on paper in the same physical location used for financial accounts, e.g. fireproof safe, trusted off-site records, estate attorney. These recovery instructions are also required for data hosted by third parties.
Continuity and Recovery are required by all infrastructure plans, since the number of 3rd-party suppliers is never zero, even with "self" hosted infrastructure.
A friend and I figured all this out together since we met in college in the 1980s. He hosted his stuff and I hosted mine. For example, starting in 1994, we had our own domain names and hosted our own email. Sometimes we used each other for backup (e.g., when we used to host our own DNS for our domains at home as well as for SMTP relays). We also hosted for family and some friends at the same time.
Four years ago he was diagnosed with cancer and a year later we lost him. It was hard enough to lose one of the closest friends I ever had. In his last weeks, he asked if I could figure out how to support his family and friends in migrating off the servers in his home rack and onto providers that made more sense for his family's level of technical understanding. This was not simple because I had moved 150 miles away, but of course I said yes.
Years later, that migration is close to complete, but it has been far more difficult than any of us imagined. Not because of anything technical, but because every step of it is a reminder of the loss of a dear friend. And that takes me out of the rational mindset I need to be in to migrate things smoothly and safely.
But, he did have me as a succession plan. With him gone, I don't have someone who thinks enough like me to be the same for my extended family. I'm used to thinking about things like succession plans at work, but it's an entirely new level to do it at home.
So, I still host a lot, but the requirements are much more thoroughly thought through. For example, we use Paperless-ngx to manage our documents. Now there's a cron job that rsync's the collection of PDFs to my wife's laptop every hour so that she will have our important papers if something happens to me.
Thinking carefully enough to come up with reliable backups like this makes things noticeably harder because not all solutions are as obvious and simple. And it's not something that ever occurred to us in our 20s and 30s, but our families were one tragedy away from not knowing how to access things that are important soon after we were gone (as soon as the server had trouble). There is more responsibility to this than we previously realized.