As soon as you’ve got been self-hosting for some time, you rapidly get used to accessing your companies at your fingertips. When a service glitch past your management occurs, nevertheless, you may lose entry. That is how I guarantee I’ve entry so long as the web itself continues to be working.
Why run two WireGuard servers for a backdoor?
Over the previous couple of years, I’ve made a particular effort to shift as lots of my companies from main tech corporations like Google, Microsoft, and Spotify to both extra privacy-focused options, or, if potential, self-hosted choices.
In that point, I’ve completely changed Microsoft Workplace and OneDrive, I’ve swapped out Google Preserve and OneNote for my own self-hosted note-taking applications, and some completely different music servers—I even built one for my car.
I additionally run my very own self-hosted file backup server on my native community that shops necessary information and folders from my PC(like tax paperwork), pictures from my telephone, and extra half-started programming tasks than I care to confess.
All in all, I’ve changed greater than a dozen subscription companies—tons of of {dollars} per 12 months—with self-hosted options, and I’ve come to depend upon them.
Which means I do not need to depend on exterior companies like Cloudflare (or different equal companies) to entry my house community whereas I am out. If Cloudflare goes out, then the Cloudflare tunnel goes down, and I am out of luck.
That’s the place the WireGuard “again doorways” are available in.
The first WireGuard server runs on my predominant self-hosting PC, which is a repurposed Home windows 10 PC. It’s far more highly effective and has a number of Ethernet ports courtesy of a community interface card I added. Nonetheless, it has one huge drawback: energy. If I lose energy, that PC shuts off instantly, since working it on batteries can be an issue.
Nonetheless, a variety of my self-hosted companies—particularly those I want day in and time out—run on Raspberry Pis which can be connected to a battery massive sufficient to maintain them energetic for a number of days with out charging.
That’s the place the second WireGuard server is available in. I’ve a small Raspberry Pi Zero sitting on my community, usually fully unused. Nonetheless, when there may be an outage, I can hook up with that as an alternative, and nonetheless keep entry to many of the important companies I want, together with music.
As long as the web itself stays functioning, you do not have to fret in case your dynamic DNS supplier is experiencing an outage—you may nonetheless join utilizing the IP straight.
My IP does not change greater than as soon as each few years, but when yours does, you can even write a script that can ship you a textual content, e mail, or different notification about what your new IP is. That means you need not fear about your IP altering when you do not count on it.
What’s one of the simplest ways to run a WireGuard server?
WireGuard servers actually do not require any particular {hardware}, though your wants are going to range relying on what you need to do. There are two very completely different setups that I like to recommend
Use an outdated desktop in case you want energy
If you happen to’re making an attempt to route all of the site visitors of a whole community by means of a WireGuard server, then you are going to want a quick laptop to deal with all the information. Ideally, that system may also have a community interface card with at the very least two one-gigabit Ethernet ports to make sure that the motherboard’s Ethernet port does not bottleneck the system.
I run mine in a container on Proxmox. Setting it up was so simple as working a single command and following the directions.
Use a Pi Zero as a backup
Regardless of how dependable my predominant PC is, it does typically go down for software program updates, whereas I migrate to a brand new model of Proxmox, or throughout energy outages.
In these instances, it’s useful to have an emergency backup. I put in a WireGuard server on a Raspberry Pi Zero which is linked to my native community over Wi-Fi. It’s a lot slower than the desktop PC I take advantage of, but it surely permits me to connect to Joplin, my private begin web page, my music server, and some extra issues that even have battery backups.
My energy drops out comparatively often, so my Pi Zero WireGuard server really sees an affordable quantity of use.
I would strongly suggest utilizing PiVPN to arrange a WireGuard server on a Pi Zero. Relying in your system, it solely requires two or three instructions, then the installer will stroll you thru each step of the method.
Although Cloudflare does not expertise a serious outage on daily basis, this can be very inconvenient when it does. The WireGuard servers I had working on my native community allowed me to take care of entry to my homelab and self-hosted companies in the course of the main 2025 outage whereas others have been locked out.
Given how necessary self-hosted companies can develop into, it’s price taking quarter-hour to arrange a again door to make sure you by no means lose entry.
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