A case for moving away from the cloud and embracing local storage solutions
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A case for moving away from the cloud and embracing local storage solutions
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Re: A case for moving away from the cloud and embracing local storage solutions
#2It's definitely worth people considering getting local storage. Personally I like the combo of onboard storage, sync to cloud storage, and routine backup to external storage.
Re: A case for moving away from the cloud and embracing local storage solutions
#3What this article fails to justify is there isn't a simple solution for users to have a "Local Cloud". A NAS or Hard Drive on a computer will be beat by the ability to have all of your photos/software on you wherever you go.
There needs to be a better way for Personal devices to access personal or home networks for personal cloud solutions to become more accessible to the average person.
Re: A case for moving away from the cloud and embracing local storage solutions
#4I don't disagree with the premise, but the author's case is deeply flawed.
> Instead of paying a monthly subscription to store and access your files, a one-time payment for an external hard drive may be a more economical alternative over time.
Cloud storage has much, much more redundancy than a single external hard drive, and the author discounts the value of that redundancy.
> Reliable access
Have fun getting grandma to cycle her drives when the drives inevitably fail! Also, have fun setting up networked access over the Internet, without resorting to a drive provider's portal (misses the point of getting off the cloud), dealing with the sorry state of static IP addresses for residential connections, helping grandma set up a domain and DNS, hoping nobody attacks your exposed network, etc.
Non-starter.
Re: A case for moving away from the cloud and embracing local storage solutions
#5> a one-time payment for an external hard drive may be a more economical alternative over time.
If you care about your data, you are playing with fire.
Drives do not store data forever. Data must be read and rewritten occasionally to maintain it, from old media past its lifespan to new media.
Good storage software, with the ability to write your data with either mirroring or striping of some sort is able to routinely scan your entire data set and detect bit rot - and rewrite sectors that contain bitrotted data to new media.
You simply do not get that level of protection buying a single external hardrive alone.
Most enterprise storage systems do this. Most cloud storage does this. It’s worth paying for if you have data that is valuable.
Re: A case for moving away from the cloud and embracing local storage solutions
#6Security: with local storage it's on you to make sure that your NAS or whatever is constantly up-to-date with security patches. And that's assuming your NAS provider keeps providing patches. It's on you to do all necessary monitoring for intrusion detection etc.
Reliability: with local storage it's on you to keep backups, make sure those backups work, replace failing drives, don't accidentally wipe the drive, and make sure you have distribution across geographies. Good luck with that.
Cost: sure, local wins here.
If systems administration is your fun hobby, or you are incredibly cost-sensitive due to large scale, by all means manage storage locally. Otherwise pay professionals to do it.
Re: A case for moving away from the cloud and embracing local storage solutions
#7Security: with local storage it's on you to make sure that your NAS or whatever is constantly up-to-date with security patches. And that's assuming your NAS provider keeps providing patches. It's on you to do all necessary monitoring for intrusion detection etc. Reliability: with local storage it's on you to keep backups, make sure those backups work, replace failing drives, don't accidentally wipe the drive, and mak…
My experience setting up a Linux NAS server on a HP Proliant N54L is that once you’re past the initial set up cost (doing Linux sysadmin things which is very time consuming and sometimes frustrating) it’s basically done.
Sure you’ll have to apply updates and reboot from time to time, but that’s almost nothing.
As for security, set things up correctly (proper samba auth) and use firewalls. UFW on the box. I have a Linux router and only computers on the right Ethernet ports can touch the the NAS. Done.
Re: A case for moving away from the cloud and embracing local storage solutions
#8Security: with local storage it's on you to make sure that your NAS or whatever is constantly up-to-date with security patches. And that's assuming your NAS provider keeps providing patches. It's on you to do all necessary monitoring for intrusion detection etc. Reliability: with local storage it's on you to keep backups, make sure those backups work, replace failing drives, don't accidentally wipe the drive, and mak…
for 99% of applications, especially with proper system design, this stuff is super easy now with containers and automated backups
if you’re storing lots of user generated data, probably should have just scrapped the idea
Re: A case for moving away from the cloud and embracing local storage solutions
#9Security: with local storage it's on you to make sure that your NAS or whatever is constantly up-to-date with security patches. And that's assuming your NAS provider keeps providing patches. It's on you to do all necessary monitoring for intrusion detection etc. Reliability: with local storage it's on you to keep backups, make sure those backups work, replace failing drives, don't accidentally wipe the drive, and mak…
Security: you don't need a NAS because your files don't need to be accessible "online" -- they're already local to your own computer.
Reliability: with local storage, you have the ability to make backups without re-downloading multiple terabytes of data each time.
And there's definitely no way your files could just spontaneously disappear from cloud storage, either:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jaymcgregor/2023/11/29/google-i...
Re: A case for moving away from the cloud and embracing local storage solutions
#10> a one-time payment for an external hard drive may be a more economical alternative over time. If you care about your data, you are playing with fire. Drives do not store data forever. Data must be read and rewritten occasionally to maintain it, from old media past its lifespan to new media. Good storage software, with the ability to write your data with either mirroring or striping of some sort is able to routinely…
I have a cron job running snapraid scrub. And smart demon with email alert. Once I had to quickly buy a HDD (next day Amazon) because it was dying.
Big appeal of cloud storage is that the data won’t go up in smoke if there’s a fire. But everything else you can do if you’re patient enough.