Honestly, I self-host about a dozen services and upgrades take me less than a minute per month usually.
I simply have one folder per service, each folder contains a docker-compose stack and a storage directory. Updating is simply a matter of running `docker compose pull` and `docker compose up -d`. Nothing more.
Breaking updates requiring to tweak the config are very uncommon, and even when they happen it's only a few minutes of checking the updated config and applying it.
IMO this is the simplest way to self-host. No VM, no complex software install, nothing more than a simple Docker Compose setup that's fully automated.
That sounds similar to my setup, but each folder is a btrfs subvolume and my update script takes a snapshot before updating. I keep the Docker compose file together with the volumes in that subvolume.
If something breaks I can decide to figure out why, or revert.
I simply have one folder per service, each folder contains a docker-compose stack and a storage directory. Updating is simply a matter of running `docker compose pull` and `docker compose up -d`. Nothing more.
Breaking updates requiring to tweak the config are very uncommon, and even when they happen it's only a few minutes of checking the updated config and applying it.
IMO this is the simplest way to self-host. No VM, no complex software install, nothing more than a simple Docker Compose setup that's fully automated.