DIY Cloud Storage for Synching mobile devices

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g0dM@n

Supreme [H]ardness
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Nov 18, 2005
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Is there a not-so-complicated solution available to build your own cloud storage where you can synch up folders from your laptops and or mobile devices?
I have a ton of equipment at my disposal and would love to build my own setup instead of paying for OneDrive, Google Drive, or dropbox. I want to build this more for my son and my wife as I know how to back my own stuff up. Both of them end up putting files on local storage and using backup software isn't as reliable as something that synchronizes on its own.

Or... should I stop being cheap and just pay the big man?
I host a lot of my own stuff otherwise:
- Dell poweredge server with plenty of UPS power, boatload of RAM
- Ton of VMs running my own domain controller, ZFS, over 30TB of double parity storage
- NAS backup storage
- Off-site desktop at a family member's home for robocopy backups over VPN
- 300/300 fiber optic (extremely stable) connection
- Sonicwall firewall
- Basically anything and everything I'd need from an infrastructure perspective

I also have data center space I could use if I must, but would rather just run most of it from home.
 
toast0 said:
There might be something better, but syncthing will probably work.
Click to expand...
Thanks for the quick reply.
So for this I'd need a windows server/desktop (I'd build as a VM) and have some shared drives mapped? I have a ZFS file server, so if I map via SMB (the service is already running), then I could create new destination folders. Hmmm....
 
BlueLineSwinger said:
NextCloud/OwnCloud?
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If it's something I have to pay for, I'm willing to go for a product that is a single-time purchase, and something with good reviews.

I'm hoping to build it, set it and forget it, at least for a few years. I understand they'll be upkeep... just trying to decide if it's worth looking into instead of paying for a cloud service. I just don't understand how, with all this knowledge and all this hardware some of us have, that still the best options are paying for someone else to do it for us.
 
g0dM@n said:
Thanks for the quick reply.
So for this I'd need a windows server/desktop (I'd build as a VM) and have some shared drives mapped? I have a ZFS file server, so if I map via SMB (the service is already running), then I could create new destination folders. Hmmm....
Click to expand...

You can probably run syncthing on the file server. I've got it setup on a freebsd machine, syncing my photos directory from my android phone. Although I had meant to do some more stuff and never got around to it (story of my life)
 
g0dM@n said:
I'm hoping to build it, set it and forget it, at least for a few years. I understand they'll be upkeep...
Click to expand...
That's exactly what OwnCloud is. I run mine in a docker container on my server. It looks for a new image nightly (a script I setup for all my containers does this), but beyond that, it's been "forget it" for over 2 years now.
 
toast0 said:
You can probably run syncthing on the file server. I've got it setup on a freebsd machine, syncing my photos directory from my android phone. Although I had meant to do some more stuff and never got around to it (story of my life)
Click to expand...
Well my file server is ZFS on omnios, so I am not sure I can run it on there. It's all CLI and I only know a few ZFS commands. Total novice still there.
Eulogy said:
That's exactly what OwnCloud is. I run mine in a docker container on my server. It looks for a new image nightly (a script I setup for all my containers does this), but beyond that, it's been "forget it" for over 2 years now.
Click to expand...
This sounds great. I haven't done anything with containers before. Can I run it on top of ESXi? I'm running 6.7u3.
 
I don't know OmniOS, but, I'd be really surprised if it doesn't have some sort of container runtime.
For ESXi... ugh. People still run that? I'm sure you can spin up a linux VM and fire up OwnCloud in there if that's how you want to run it. I gave up on VMs a long time ago for home use, and haven't kept up with VMware products for ~5 years. They don't yet natively run containers?
 
Eulogy said:
I don't know OmniOS, but, I'd be really surprised if it doesn't have some sort of container runtime.
For ESXi... ugh. People still run that? I'm sure you can spin up a linux VM and fire up OwnCloud in there if that's how you want to run it. I gave up on VMs a long time ago for home use, and haven't kept up with VMware products for ~5 years. They don't yet natively run containers?
Click to expand...
I've been doing VMware for a decade now, so it's hard for me to shy away from it.
As far as containers, that'd be Tanzu. I'm not sure there's anything I can do natively with 6.7.
Sure, if I wasn't a VMware advanced professional, I'd have run something like KVM or proxmox.
 
I run nextcloud in a jail on my freenas at home and use dynamic dns updates so that a subdomain of my website points at it. I run the nextcloud client on my phone, laptops, desktops, etc... self-host my keepass and other useful things on it.
 
Lots of great solutions here. Sounds like I really need to get into containers.
 
ng4ever said:
Would a simple Synology NAS work ?
Click to expand...
It may, but I already have a dual parity primary setup with backup on-site and backup to off-site. Was hoping to leverage my primary setup and throw data at it through a new VM or service.
 
NextCloud is pretty much self hosted Dropbox. Once it's setup it's as reliable as the hardware hosting it and your internet connection. Throw it in Docker and you're off to the races. Clients are available for pretty much everything.
 
Did nexrcloud for a while. Run filerun now. Less resources, uses the nextcloud apps for access if needed. I never used all the features of nextcloud to make it worth it.
 
I have used Resilio for personal myself to keep data synced between multiple devices (PC to a NAS, then NAS to NAS). It was pretty easy to set up and cheap at the time because I was grandfathered in.
 
OFaceSIG said:
I'm looking into PhotoStructure myself.
Click to expand...

I've run photostructure for about 2 years now with a paid subscription. Dev is active in his discord. It's one person so all platforms are not stable with newest versions. Still good stuff for a personal project.
 
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