Self-Hosted AI Infrastructure for Small Businesses — Part 4 of 5
Free series. All open-source. No DevOps background required. Estimated hands-on time: 60–90 minutes.
Most systems don’t fail when you build them.
They fail when you stop watching them.
What This Part Does
By the end of this part:
You can access any machine remotely from a browser
You know when something breaks before it matters
Your data is backed up and recoverable
Your system can survive failure
Step 1: Remote Desktop (Apache Guacamole)
Create:
mkdir -p ~/guacamole && cd ~/guacamole
nano docker-compose.yml
Paste:
version: '3'
services:
guacd:
image: guacamole/guacd
restart: always
db:
image: postgres:15
restart: always
environment:
- POSTGRES_DB=guacamole_db
- POSTGRES_USER=guacamole_user
- POSTGRES_PASSWORD=YOUR_PASSWORD
guacamole:
image: guacamole/guacamole
restart: always
depends_on:
- guacd
- db
environment:
- GUACD_HOSTNAME=guacd
- POSTGRESQL_HOSTNAME=db
- POSTGRESQL_DATABASE=guacamole_db
- POSTGRESQL_USER=guacamole_user
- POSTGRESQL_PASSWORD=YOUR_PASSWORD
ports:
- "127.0.0.1:8888:8080"
Run:
docker-compose up -d
Open:
👉 https://remote.yourdomain.com
Step 2: Connect Your Machine
Enable RDP (Windows)
Assign static IP
Configure router
👉 Access your office PC from anywhere
Step 3: Time Tracking
Enable in Nextcloud:
👉 TimeTracker
Use:
Start / Stop
Tag sessions
👉 Export CSV
Step 4: Tasks & Projects
Tasks
This Week
Client Work
Finance
Deck (Kanban)
Backlog
In Progress
Waiting
Done
👉 One system, no duplication
Step 5: Monitoring (Prometheus + Grafana)
Install:
sudo apt install -y prometheus prometheus-node-exporter grafana
Start:
sudo systemctl enable --now grafana-server
Open:
👉 https://grafana.yourdomain.com
👉 Live metrics
Step 6: Alerts
Configure Alertmanager:
👉 Email alerts when:
CPU high
Memory high
Disk low
👉 You know before failure
Step 7: Encrypted Backup
Create:
nano ~/backup.sh
Schedule:
crontab -e
👉 Weekly backup
What You Just Built
System Status
Remote access ✓
Monitoring ✓
Alerts ✓
Backup ✓
👉 This is now production-ready
Why This Matters
Most people stop at:
“It works”
You now have:
“It keeps working”
What Part 5 Covers
Maintenance
Failure recovery
Operations
👉 Final layer
Final Thought
Building a system is easy.
Keeping it running is what makes it real.
Part 5 is next.
— Kusunoki
Top comments (0)