Hey! I’ve finally started reaching my ultimate goal of SSO nirvana and have Authentik working well and more and more of my normal-use apps getting routed through it’s authentication. However, I’ve been at this hobby for coming up on 10 years and I know without a doubt, that it’s not if, but when my server will break down while I need it most. So I’d like to start moving my most important services to a VPS. I’m thinking SSO and Uptime Kuma. Free is not required and I think ~$100 CAD/yr is probably worthwhile. Any good ideas?

Second - I’m also realizing that while I love the awesomness of Authentik, what it has allowed me to really learn is how to do SSO, LDAP, OIDC, and SAML. I love it so much that I just don’t want it to break, which means I should probably get my big boy pants on and learn Azure AD. Again, is there a way to get a relatively low cost option started?

Ultimate goal here is to create a nice hybrid environment.

  • Fun new services spun up and run locally
  • Tried and true (and light) mainstays move to a VPS that I don’t tinker on
  • SSO migrated to an enterprise solution that won’t (or shouldn’t easily) break.

Is this a crazy plan? What should I think about?

  • SomethingAboutUsersBEnglish
    1·
    11 months ago

    First off, moving to a VPS/cloud server isn’t necessarily going to guarantee any more stability than what you are doing on-premise. While it’s true that there is likely to be heaps more redundancy in the various components (storage, hypervisor, electrical, network, etc) that doesn’t necessarily mean more uptime because they tend to do stuff with less care than you might (e.g., patching the hypervisor and rebooting it which might cause your server to reboot) because that’s their job. So I would analyze exactly what you value in terms of what the cloud/a VPS brings you that you don’t get at home.

    Second, in terms of free stuff, Azure has a free tier that gets you a bunch of stuff (including certain VM SKUs) for a year. Azure AD/Entra ID itself has a free tier as well that goes beyond the 1 year of free cloud stuff you get which might be enough to get you going.