Alternative Server Hosting

Hello Lains, I've been considering getting a climate-controlled self storage unit to host a server in. Nothing crazy, just a ATX/Mid Tower PC running email, SearXNG, and Invidious servers as well as one or two other things. I know renting from a VPS for what I want to do can be relatively cheap these days, but I'm aiming to self-host with my own hardware without hosting it on my home network (even more pressing is the factor I don't really have a home network, long story) Has anybody tried this? The largest issue I can think of is the ability to port-forward or not. If a storage unit is not a good place, then would having a discreet setup tucked in a corner of a public library be out of the question? None of these ideas are great, I know, but I just want to see if anybody has advice on what I'll call "Alternative Server Hosting".

Would help to know what country you are from since different countries have different regulations and protections on data.

raspi with a battery, on top of a ceiling tile somewhere with public wifi. you can use tor or a similar overlay network to get around the need for port forwarding. though if you're considering renting a storage unit, surely colocation has got to be cheaper.

A climate controlled storage unit would cost just as much as a cheap vps and it would be a ton more trouble. The pi hiddwn near public wifi idea has been done but you have to babysit the battery and be careful when and how much you use bandwidth, to avoid discovery. All in all it just isn't worth the effort when you can rent a cheap, reliable, easy to use vps for around $10/mo.

>>79674 The US of A (Post body was too short..)

>>79672 You may be able to hide a SBC inside the chassis of a public desktop. A lot of motherboards have extra internal USB headers, whose VBUS+GND may be enough to power the SBC. Networking could be wireless if the chassis doesn't act as a Faraday cage. You may be able to figure something out to split the host's ethernet connection, via some sort of switch or additional router that MitMs both the host and network: allowing you to surreptitiously inject your own traffic while both making it appear like the real host's traffic to the network and invisible to the real host. But that's too complicated. You could reliable use USB to relay traffic through the host by emulating a USB NIC with its own subnet. That's been done before AFAIK.

Is it possible to buy a climate controlled storage unit (like a condominium) or are they only available for rent?

>>79711 (This is speculation, do your own research) There may be some that you can buy and repurpose for your needs. Storage units for wine, rare books, or some other commodity where maintaining constant temperature is important can likely be converted for your needs. Freezer or cryogenics trucks may be available as well. Alternatively, you can pick a spot where there are year-round low temperatures and use that as "passive" cooling.

>>79675 This is actually what I did to get my fully anonymous proxy server. I planted a raspi 4 with a battery hat and solar next to it to a tree and used an antenna to probe a fast public wifi. tho it's really hard to get any kind of port forwarding to work if you don't have access to the router. >>79672 If your setup is really that small In my opinion you are just better of asking a friend or family member if you could store your pc at their houses. Also get the admin password for the router and setup a ddns. EZ. But really, if that's not an option you could aways just rent out a small vps with a static address and route all the traffic of your tower to that. And btw what exactly stopping you from self-hosting on your own network? Privacy concerns?