Hosting server remotely?

[BVTheEpic]

Currently, my Jellyfin server only runs when my laptop is turned on, as that is where the server is hosted. My media files are located on my hard drive as well.

I know I can host my media files on a cloud drive, but is there a way I can host the server itself remotely? In case I don't have access to my laptop but still want to watch a movie on my server.

[TheDreadPirate]

Your options are to have some computer running all the time at home or to rent a VPS or dedicated server from some hosting provider.

If you run the computer locally at home you'd need to acquire a domain name, which can be free from several DDNS providers.

[BVTheEpic]

rent a VPS or dedicated server from some hosting provider.

This is probably the better solution. Are there any tutorials on how to set Jellyfin up on a dedicated server? I've only ever set it up locally.

[Host-in-the-Shell]

Just keep in mind that hosting your own media server on a VPS, if you need to do a lot of transcoding or other CPU intensive tasks such as media scanning frequently and whatnot, a shared plan would make the overall experience worse since you would suffer slowdowns unless you pay for a plan with a dedicated CPU, which can be significantly more expensive.

Another thing to consider is that sometimes some of the CPUs that VPS providers use are not that great at transcoding and depending on your provider you don't even get to choose which one your virtual machine will use. Also, storage can be very expensive to rent. There are ways to expose your own local storage to said VPS but at that point it may be better to simply host within your own network exposing Jellyfin through a reverse proxy.

The amount of fees I had to pay monthly and how they would stack over a year made me reconsider, and decided to foot the electric bill myself while providing my own server too.

[TheDreadPirate]

What Host-in-the-shell said.

Fully hosting Jellyfin, both storage and processing, on a data center hosting provider is expensive. It really should be a last resort. Like if your ISP uses CGNAT, you'd use a cheap VPS to act as a reverse proxy to tunnel back to your Jellyfin server.

Fully hosting at a hosting provider is only justifiable if you live out in the sticks and you have unreliable or extremely slow Internet/upload at home.