Hi. Some friends of mine are starting a business and they want to setup a server to host a simple "contact" website, run an e-mail service (about 10 accounts for now but with possibilities of expanding it to support more) and to store and remote access documents.
Im a computer savvy person so they asked me for help, but dont know much about self-hosting so I come here asking you:
What kind of hardware do they need and would be best?
What OS and other software is required and recomended?
How to set it up/configure it? Im partial to foss but if there are good propietary options they are acceptable too.
And last: What do we have to watch out for or avoid.
Also, space is a bit of an issue, I was thinking they could use something small like an intel nuc but Im worried that hardware would be underpowered for their needs.
I have been googling for stuff myself but I get overwhelmed by the ammount of information and some contradicting opinions so I appreciate your recomendations and guidance. Im not asking you to give me a full tutorial, although I would appreciate it too, but just to be pointed in the right direction to avoid, as much as possible, spending money and time on things they might not really need or might not perform as well.
Thanks in advance.
possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 5 weeks ago
Seek someone with professional experience. Also you don’t want to host your own email server. Use the cloud for this as it is way simpler and doesn’t have the same issues.
!sysadmin@lemmy.world
Agent641@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Even C/selfhosted fears self hosted email servers lmao
Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 weeks ago
Not fear but you need to have the respect it deserves.
azron@lemmy.ml 4 weeks ago
We, selfhosters and sysadmins alike, need to change our tune around the position of “do not self host email.” It only serves to keep email in the grip of big tech. Yes it is difficult and someone without any experience shouldn’t start there but it is definitely manageable and not nearly as hard as it is made out to be.
There are multiple email “distributions” nowadays making the software stack set up and maintenance effectively an exercise in running a regular Linux distro upgrade. Mailinabox and mailcow to name two off the top of my head.
The DNS records are relatively straightforward to set up and validate with these mail distros, they basically tell you what to put and provide ways of validating you did sbay they said you should. There are also many ways to test that you set them up properly by having a service validate them via email you send to the testing service, e.g. mail-tester.com and dmarctester.com, finally DMARC has a port function builtin so you can get regulsr delivery reports that come directly from the servers choosing what to do with your email giving you a clear signal when there are problems.
You don’t have to jump into hard mode around a clean IP either you can offload that for a nominal fee to an email service provider if you don’t want to try your luck, e.g. MXroute.com has a one time fee for multiple domains.
Yes email is convulted and confusing at times and scary to host given how essential it is but I’d encourage anyone with the time and desire to do it.
possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 4 weeks ago
Self hosting email is a huge pain. I wouldn’t personally recommend it. In many ways it sucks but that’s the world we live in.