Home hosted cloud storage options?

[Shadrack]

Hi!

I'm wondering if anyone has any experience setting up their own home connection hosted 'cloud' syncing setup like Dropbox. I have a 20mbps downstream and a 6mbps upstream connection that I would like to utilize. I've already setup a dyndns and am quite comfortable with forwarding ports. Currently I have an SSH/SFTP server setup. Are there any SFTP 'syncing' programs that are worth trying out? Something cross platform (Mac OS/Windows) perferably.

Thanks

[TAZMINATOR]

What do you mean by handle login? Do all logins go through their servers?

 

Yes, just like SkyDrive. You use login to connect to the servers in order to sync your files so you have up to date files in all of your devices no matter where you are. iPad, PC, smartphone...  even you can share files with your family/friends.

[+Fahim S. MVC]

Thanks Budman and Shozilla.

I don't understand why the OP can't use ownCloud. It is just PHP on Apache. Both should be readily be available for a Mac running on PowerPC. Might be a little more involved to set up but nothing to suggest it won't run.

[+BudMan MVC]

I think he could prob get the server going.. I believe the client is needs 10.6 or higher

ownCloud client for Mac

(Mac OS X 10.6 or better, Intel 64 bit)

[+Fahim S. MVC]

Why would he need the client on the Mac Mini.

Am assuming that all other Macs are newer. Incorrect assumption?

[+BudMan MVC]

True -- might of been my fault in that part.. When I did a quick look at the site to see if it supports mac and what level etc. I think I clicked into the desktop client vs the server side..

@OP .fahim is correct the server aspect of owncloud should pretty much run on anything.

[Shadrack]

Thanks for the info .fahim and pointing out what I was missing.  You are correct, I don't need a client running on the Mac Mini.  I'll give OwnCloud a go!  All my clients are modern Macs and Windows PCs so the client should run fine.  At some point I may replace this Mac Mini with something but it will probably be more like a standalone NAS such as a Synology :-P.

 

Thanks again.

[+BudMan MVC]

Standalone nas are great, but again they are limiting in what you can do with them if you ask me. For the same kind of money for a standalone nas that does this and that you could put together a host for virtual, say esxi, zen, etc. And then do whatever you want on any vm you want to run. Be it a nas on one vm, a web server on an other. Cent OS on 1 vm, Freebsd on another or debian, etc. etc..

For around the same money you can get more options and more room to play.

[+Fahim S. MVC]

What Budman said.

It's surprising how little resource you need to run 5/6 VMs. An Atom class processor with 16GB RAM, 2 NICs and a 64GB SSD supports 5 VMs for me with surprising performance.

[+BudMan MVC]

Yeah Im on a N40L (AMD Turion II Neo N40L 1.5GHz 2-Core) with 8GB, I have more nics in mine and run my datastore of a 250GB drive it came with.. But I always have 3 VMs running with many more on there that are on and off - sometimes I forget and leave them on so I have had 6+ running all that the same time with no notice of issues.

I got mine for like $279, with extra ram and extra nic and 2TB I was a bit over $400 I think..

I show this

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822108121

For 429, only 512MB (max I think) comes with only 2 bays and no hard drives. My N40L came with 2GB of ram and 250GB disk and has 4 bays, and 2 more drives you could fit in the optical bay area. If you go with 2.5 inch drives I believe you can fit 4 in there for like 8 drives internally.. It only has 3 usb connections, where the N40L has 7 plus esata..

Then just put whatever VM software you want and your rocking..

[Shadrack]

I'm a little curious why you would want to run everything in VMs as oppose to natively.  Is it just easier to maintain, or what is the main drive for that decision?  Seems like a VM would consume more overhead than just running all the server software natively.

[+Fahim S. MVC]

You can put 6 2.5" drives in the optical bay but would need to use 9.5mm tall drives. You will need a controller for the extra SATA ports though.

My system:

HP MicroServer N54L - slightly newer than the N40 (?80 after cash back)

2x 8GB RAM (?100)

Dell PERC H310 HBA (?70 on eBay)

Intel Pro/1000 NIC (?20)

2x SFF-8087 to 4xSATA fan out cables (?20)

IcyDock 5.25 to 4x2.5 hotswap rack (?60)

Random SATA/Molex power splitters (?10)

Crucial M4 64GB SSD (?60)

And then whatever you want to spend on populating the 4x3.5" drive bays and 4x2.5" drive bays.

So minus drives this cost ?420. And runs a comfortable 5 VMs including:

1) A pfSense router

2) A FreeNAS NAS

3) A NexentaStor Community Edition NAS

4) An Ubuntu 12.04 LTS Desktop VM - trying to decide if Linux is a suitable primary OS for me.

5) An Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (I think) Server VM - running OwnCloud, Node.js, MongoDB among other things I am playing with.

The cheapest 8 bay NAS would be the Synology DS1812+ at ?645 - pretty much all it does is serve files.

Even running all of these VMs I have about 6GB RAM free and my processor runs about 50% most of the time. I have run out of space on the SSD though.

Bit of a no-brainer if you ask me.

[+BudMan MVC]

So what I have 4 or 5 boxes or 8 or 9 or even 10?? All sucking up juice. Have to pay for multiple hardware, multiple drives.

If you run it native and you go to say update something and it takes a ######.. What you restore from backup image, or reinstall. With a VM, I roll it back to the snap I took before I played with it. If I want another machine to play with, click I have a clone of the machine I was working with -- with all the same settings/software.. Or if need clean just boot up copy of my templates.

Now if I was wanting to play say Bioshock or KSP or something and needed full speed and access to the hardware for performance reasons.. Then that is what my desktop is for.. But when I want to test something in 2012, or 2k3 or 2k8 or Win8 or win7 or XP, or cent os or mint, or netbsd or freebsd or play with backtrack, why and the hell would I want to waste hardware on that, costing money, costing elec..

My little esxi host uses up 55W about.. It has 4 disks, is always running 3 VMs, my router (pfsense) my NAS (Storage essentials with drive pool software) and my linux box.. I could not get by without a linux shell to freely access at a click. If I investigating something I fire up my ntop vm...

Visualization breaks you away from hardware constraints, having to have specific drivers from maker of X.. Lets you fully utilize your hardware, vs a bunch of boxes sitting around sucking up elec using 2% of the cpu..

Allows you to upgrade your hardware without having to even really take down your OS/Software you were running.. I buy a beefier box.. Move my VMs over to it - bang they have more power in cpu, storage, etc.. Shoot if wasn't using the FREE version of esxi and could vmotion them over - I could put them on better hardware without even having to reboot the OS, etc.

I would never go back to running everything on its own hardware.. Its restraining and costly..

[+Fahim S. MVC]

Some of these things need to be run as a VM as opposed to running on a single OS because they are essentially a software appliance not an application that can be installed. It makes them perfect for running as a VM.

[+BudMan MVC]

yeah the price on the HP microservers is crazy cheap in ? - I think the N36 and N40 were like ?100 after rebate.. I got lucky to find mine on sale for $279.. They seem to run about mid to high 300's - no rebates..

Yeah you got a pretty rocking setup there.. I keep meaning to update mine to 16 and add a SSD.. The VMs boot pretty quick as is, but if SSD Im sure they would be up and running in a few seconds..

The N56 line seems to have just boosted the cpu a bit is all. But I wouldn't mind adding a second one so could play with vmotion

And the point about appliances is very valid - You can play with lot of turnkey stuff just by loading the OVA and bingbangzoom your up and running in a couple of minutes with whatever application you were looking to play with.

VMs are where it is at to be sure.. There are just amazing advantages to using them.. Another advantage is they can really extend the life of an application with little regard to changes in hardware.. Say you got something that only works in NT or 9X.. Good luck getting that to work on current hardware, but hardware in the VM does not have to change, what the OS sees it understands and works just fine.. So in theory you could be running something on 9x 10-20 years from now, when there is no way it would work on the hardware of the day.

From a security point of view, say you need to visit a site that might or might not be bad, or run some software you have concerns over.. Just run it in a VM, its isolated - after your done, just roll that VM back to a snap before even just delete it and your good.. Not to worry that it got infected with some rootkit or junkware, etc.

I can have 10 different OSes at my fingertips just ready to run or even all running at the same time accessed via my desktop screens and keyboard seamlessly flow from one to another with no effort.. Why in the world would I want to have 10 different boxes of hardware to accomplish that?

[Shadrack]

I have OwnCloud installed and setup.  Seems to work fine so far.  For some reason the OwnCloud 5.0 is currently not compatible with Mac OS X according to the documents so I had to install OwnCloud 4.5.

 

Right now I'm just playing around with it using MAMP because that seemed to have all the necessary php libraries baked in.  I probably should secure it before I push much further.

 

I'm not sure with what level of rigor I need to secure a single user server...  Any advice would be welcome.

[stadel69]

Personally, I dont use my own cloud, but smile2cloud.com instead.

 

They offer good services for reasonable price.

[grabageek]

I use Pogoplug for my home cloud needs - has all the apps for my tech - syncs to my home drives - job done - no mess no fuss.

[Lucatag]

I have purchased JustCloud after reading this review: http://tenbestcloud.com/Cloud-Providers/justcloud.html

 

It gives me a sync folder on my laptop that I can use to sync all files.

Here is a secret tip to spend only 24 euros a year for 250 GB of space.

1.Sign up for free

2. Refuse all offers from them for 14 days

3. Wait until you get the 70% discount. Then purchase for 1 year and get the discount.

It's a fast and reliable software, you will love it. Good luck!