Secret knowledge to self-host Next.js

Deploying Next.js applications outside of Vercel involves various considerations, including the choice between using traditional servers or serverless functions. While Vercel simplifies hosting through proprietary solutions, deploying elsewhere requires understanding tradeoffs, particularly in managing CDN integration, caching, and image optimization. Using servers with containerization abstracts much of the complexity traditionally associated with virtual private servers, making them comparably easy to deploy as serverless options. However, serverless architectures carry higher operational complexity due to their distributed, asynchronous nature. The OpenNext community adapter aids in converting Next.js builds for serverless deployment, but lacks official support, leading to potential issues with updates. Despite these challenges, deploying to servers remains the only officially supported method outside of Vercel, necessitating additional configurations for cache management and CDN support to ensure optimal performance, particularly when using features like ISR and stale-while-revalidate caching. For production environments, maintaining at least two server instances behind a load balancer is recommended to ensure reliability and resilience.