In my opinion, the difference with Google is that Google is actively using your data and you’re giving them a lot of it. For Cloudflare, what do they have exactly? Depends on what services you use, but really all they get from me is the list of servers that connect to my domains. Google does that too if you use 8.8.8.8, or if you have any of their hardware that overrides router DNS settings like Chromecast and Google TV.

I mean it depends on the intensity of the surge, but basically you’d be making it so your PSU is unable to protect the devices from surges. The more sensitive the electronics, the more critical the ground is and CPUs are pretty darned sensitive among other things. And depending on the type of components in the PSU, “surges” also include things like inrush current. Basically, when you turn on a transformer or certain other devices, there is a surge of sometimes as much as 10 times the rated current to create the initial magnetic flux. Depending on the components, this excess energy may end up getting shunted to the ground to avoid pushing it through your electronics. So if it can’t do that, you likely will blow fuses a lot when switching the power on (hopefully there are fuses), or if you’re touching the case which is supposed to be grounded, you may end up getting that jolt.

Anyway, without grounded outlets, and especially if your electronics are cheaply made because many expect there to be grounding and don’t build in extra components to deal with not having a ground, you are likely to significantly reduce the life of your electronics, your life, or start a fire without even considering major surges. If you have a high-end PSU, you may never have a problem until that surge happens. How stable is your power? Because even a normally small surge combined with a cheap PSU, and no ground, is pretty likely to end up in damage to electronics at the best case.

Automate as much as possible. I rsync to both an online and home NAS for all of my hosted stuff, both at home and in the cloud. Updates for the OS and low level libraries are automated. The other updates are generally manual, that allows me to set aside time for fixing problems that updates might cause while still getting most of the critical security updates. And my update schedules are generally during the day, so that if something doesn’t restart properly, I can fix it.

Also, whenever possible I assume a fair amount of time for updates, far beyond what it should actually take. That way I won’t be rushed to fix the problem and end up having to revert to a backup and find time later to redo it. Then most of the time I have extra time for analyzing stats to see if I can improve performance or save money with optimizations.

I’ve never had a remote provider just suddenly vanish though I use fairly well known hosts. And as for local hardware, I just have to do without until I can buy a replacement. Or if it’s going to be some time, I do have old hardware that I could set up as a makeshift, temporary replacement like old desktop computers and some hardware that I use for experimenting like my Le Potato that isn’t powerful enough for much, but ok for the short term.

And finally I’ve been moving to more container-based setups that are easier to get up and running again. I’ve been experimenting with Nomad, Docker Swarm, K3s, etc., along with Traefik and some other reverse proxies so o can keep the workers air-gapped for security.

I self host a lot, but I host a lot on cheap VPS’s, mostly, in addition to the few services on local hardware.

However, these also don’t take into account the amount of time and money to maintain these networks and equipment. Residential electricity isn’t cheap; internet access isn’t cheap, especially if you have to get business class Internet to get upload speeds over 10 or 15 mbps or to avoid TOS breaches of running what they consider commercial services even if it’s just for you, mostly because of of cable company monopolies; cooling the hardware, especially if you live in a hotter climate, isn’t cheap; and maintaining the hardware and OS, upgrades, offsite backups for disaster recovery, and all of the other costs. For me, VPS’s work, but for others maintaining the OS and software is too much time to put in. And just figuring out what software to host and then how to set it up and properly secure it takes a ton of time.

That electric bill, though. 🤣

Mailcow or Mailu have pretty good setups if you don’t want to do anything too different and don’t need to keep resource usage to a minimum.

Docker is nice for things that have complex installations and I want a very specific implementation that I don’t plan to tweak very much. Otherwise, it’s more hassle than it’s worth. There are lots of networking issues like limited/experimental support for IPv6, and too much is hidden and preconfigured, making it difficult to make adjustments that would otherwise just be a config file change.

So it is good for products like a mail server where you want to use the exact software they use like let’s say postfix + dovecot + roundcube + nginix + acme + MySQL + spam assassin + amavisd, etc. But you want to use an existing reverse proxy and cert it setup, or want to use a different spam filter or database and it becomes a huge hassle.

My Libre, El Potato, works well enough. I use it to run octoprint on Debian Bullseye and the GPIO to turn on/off the printer and with some temperature sensors and to control the fan in the external electronics enclosure I built. But to be fair, it was a lot more trouble to set up than if I could have gotten my hands on a raspberry pi at the time.