Where to start with self-hosting

I set up Kubernetes to learn it. The cluster itself took an afternoon, but everything after it took the rest of the week: delivery, secrets, certificates, isolation between tenants, observability, backups. I did not want to pay for that week twice, so the second cluster became a repository you can fork.

• K3s starter kit on Hetzner cloud. What it costs (€122.45 a month, measured), what it uses before any of your own code runs (4,526 Mi, also measured), and where k3s is genuinely stronger than the simple options. Which, under about ten services, is nowhere.

• What a game world server actually needs. A worked example of the same decision: what to buy for a WoW emulator, and which half of it a cluster is any use for.

The platform itself is at hcloud-k3s-platform-kit: fork it, edit the values, run it. All decisions are documented clearly with their trade-offs.

Choose your tools wisely, and don’t reach for the complex solutions if you don’t need them. A single €7 box is likely adequate for most apps.

Every number in these posts was measured on a live Hetzner Cloud cluster.