Hey There,
These first few posts are going to be me testing the waters on how I want to lay out a blog post and in what context. Here we go.
My server architecture has gone through quite a few iterations and we are now finally settling on a standard structure. I began using online hosted services for Wordpress. The service was https://wpengine.com. They are the best Wordpress hosting company around. They provide excellent service and support, speed, and scalability.
After working with them and getting about 20 websites hosted, it was becoming cost prohibitive to me. This was around 2017. At this point I started seeing what was going on with censorship as well. I started researching computer server hardware for the first time.
I can’t say I made a conscious decision to build a censorship aware hosting company, but I always liked computer hardware and wanted to link my company with the real world. The virtual world can be very deceptive in its temptations of a, “World without limits.” It only is without limits if you stare at a screen that is 6-16 inches wide, which is a bit ironic.
The servers I settled on were Dell R720’s. Can see those here. They are built on Xeon E5 series processors, which when I was looking, and honestly still are, a decent deal for the power you get. They are starting to get a bit dated compared to the newer processors coming out in the past 2-3 years. We have since begun transitioning our servers over to a custom architecture based on the AMD Ryzen 9 desktop processors. I will explain more about our hardware architecture in the future as well.
We use open source software for as many solutions as possible, and where not open source we use license based software. The goal is always to self-host our own applications for the sake of privacy and data sovereignty. I do believe geography plays a very important role going forward in how we consider our data. Where it is matters.
As we go into this blog I’m going to explain in more detail the various open source projects we both support and use for our customers. I will list some of the main ones here: TrueNAS, Portainer, Docker, Debian 11, PFSense, Wordpress, Nextcloud, AVideo, Gitlab, BTCPay Server, Poste Mail Server, and a few others. These are all free software and if you have the knowledge, you can run these in your basement if you want to host your own information, services, etc. For further learning on what options are available to you for open source projects and self-hosting check out this github repo.
If you are unable/unwilling to learn these systems, as they can be complex, you can always hire us to manage your digital infrastructure/applications for you.
To summarize a bit about what Altha Technology does. We keep Christians online. We provide services related to crypto currency, self-hosting, server hardware, website design, livestreaming, and many other online digital tools available to be self-sufficient online.
Why own your own data? Because it’s fun, and it is also appropriate in reality. Being responsible for your data, keeping it geographically situated, and maintaining your sovereignty over it is a better way to live online. It’s not something you can do in one night, but it is a worthy endeavor and I have enjoyed the process, and enjoy providing the digital online services to our customers that we do at Altha Technology.
For a first post this is a bit everywhere, but I wanted to give an overview to everyone of some of the subjects and topics that will be discussed.
Sincerely,
Jared
Owner, Altha Technology
