They'd be adequate at running a bunch of services, but cannot bring the connectivity and reliability that AWS provides. I myself have been running a bunch of Chinese Mini-PCs to the same effect since last few years now, and found Reddit Homelab community to be a source of inspiration.
I have an ultra cheap VPS instance that I run wireguard on, and expose these servers to the internet through there. The Mini-PCs are like NUCs, so they hardly consume much power, and I have paid less than 6 months worth of comparable AWS costs to own and run them till now.
The two biggest issues I have are power backup - UPS works for only 3-4 hours, after which the servers shut down, and internet connections - I have 2 100Mbps fiber lines load balanced, but the reliability of consumer internet leaves things to be desired.
I spend roughly 2-3 hours every other month to maintain the whole thing, which is pretty much hands-off. I'd say it's been totally worth it for me, but I still use AWS for mostly S3 and SES.
I have an ultra cheap VPS instance that I run wireguard on, and expose these servers to the internet through there. The Mini-PCs are like NUCs, so they hardly consume much power, and I have paid less than 6 months worth of comparable AWS costs to own and run them till now.
The two biggest issues I have are power backup - UPS works for only 3-4 hours, after which the servers shut down, and internet connections - I have 2 100Mbps fiber lines load balanced, but the reliability of consumer internet leaves things to be desired.
I spend roughly 2-3 hours every other month to maintain the whole thing, which is pretty much hands-off. I'd say it's been totally worth it for me, but I still use AWS for mostly S3 and SES.