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A case for moving away from the cloud and embracing local storage solutions

blog.golivecosmos.com

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Re: A case for moving away from the cloud and embracing local storage solutions

#41

Post by Gys »

buro9 wrote: post #17

Syncthing is a dream. Photos sync'd from phone to laptop making pics taken instantly available to share via desktop apps. Also add in the NAS and you have three copies before you consider RAID or BTRFS or anything. Replace Dropbox with syncthing and you have multiple folders and can choose which folders go to which devices. Put a NAS at a second location and you have the ability to power up and power down the remote…

What I like about Dropbox is all files are available (browsable) from their ios app. Do you happen to use a similar app for remote browsing?

Re: A case for moving away from the cloud and embracing local storage solutions

#42

Post by Helmut10001 »

ssss11 wrote: post #37
Helmut10001 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. We need more and better instructions and easier-to-setup tools - all of this got a big boost with docker (compose). On the other hand, we need to pair the less-technical with the power-users and help each other. I am responsible for about 8-10 people. This frees them from cloud providers and helps me to built better and more robust solutions.

You’re doing great work then, well done! I run a synology nas with docker compose for some services and it works well. With a young family though when something does go wrong it can throw out a few days of my (very little) spare time.

Yeah, I have a family myself. This only worked for me because I have the habit to go to bed early (like 8PM) and stand up at 4-5 AM in the morning. This gives (or: gave) me about 1-2 hours before breakfast to learn Linux and DevOps.

Re: A case for moving away from the cloud and embracing local storage solutions

#43

Post by epups »

pmlnr wrote: post #36
JeanMarcS wrote: post #25

Ok. So now your house is on fire. How do you retrieve your datas from the melted local NAS ? Or a buglar come and empties it. Don't get me wrong, I'm full "move away from the cloud" in the "proprietary cloud" way. But getting some drive space on a different location is important if you care about your datas. Could be in a relative's or friend's place (so almost no per month cost) or on a cloud drive (I personnaly use…

Ok. So your credit card expired, and the provider cleared your cloud data. How do you retrieve it? See, each has issues.

This is not a good example. One of them is under your control, the other isn't.

Re: A case for moving away from the cloud and embracing local storage solutions

#44

Post by Helmut10001 »

baz00 wrote: post #33
Helmut10001 wrote: post #24

I run a 48 TB ZFS pool (Z2; 24TB usable), and an offsite, offline 48 TB ZFS pool (mirror). My primary server is Proxmox, where I have 8 unprivileged VMs with Docker nested inside (since ZFS 2.2.0, Docker on unprivileged ZFS works now without detours). My backup is ZFS-send plus Borgmatic as a fallback, until I trust the ZFS-send approach that I just added (I usually have "migration phases" for new features that may l…

I spent a good number of years thinking this was the right solution and heading towards it. I had drawn up designs for my house, solar installation and half a rack of kit. This was to run a domain for my immediate family and all services including media storage and streaming. Solar was going to be 100% grid independent i.e. not some crappy provider based install. The infra was all targeted at Debian. Then I got two s…

I know what you mean. I cannot really comment (I have a sick parent, now, too, unfortunately).

Just one answer to this:

> One of the worst sub-parts was the question from the kids: I want this music and then going to get it and deal with it and then distribute it to everyone. This would take hours a month to manage.

There are million ways to set this up, I know. This is how I did it: People have their "music" folder that is synced to the Nextcloud Server. This folder is then bind-mount (read-only) to the Funkwhale-Docker inside an LXC container. On file updates, Funkwhale scans files and add any new music to people's libraries, so they can immediately listen to their new music. There is no human intervention required, zero admin work (beyond the initial setup).

I followed this design principle throughout all my services and it is pretty much "if I have no time: leave it running and it will run 12month + without requiring work".

I am at a stage now where this really _safes_ me time. All the document organization, paperless office etc. free up my spare time so I can play with my kid, help my parents etc.

I simply lost all trust to cloud providers when Amazon once said I could backup my photos for free (5TB). The upload took one month. 12 months later, they said they would deprecate the service. I had to pull everything again. Never again.

Re: A case for moving away from the cloud and embracing local storage solutions

#45

Post by stef25 »

pmlnr wrote: post #36
JeanMarcS wrote: post #25

Ok. So now your house is on fire. How do you retrieve your datas from the melted local NAS ? Or a buglar come and empties it. Don't get me wrong, I'm full "move away from the cloud" in the "proprietary cloud" way. But getting some drive space on a different location is important if you care about your datas. Could be in a relative's or friend's place (so almost no per month cost) or on a cloud drive (I personnaly use…

Ok. So your credit card expired, and the provider cleared your cloud data. How do you retrieve it? See, each has issues.

Or you don't read the small print and Backblaze deleted the backup of your external disk if you don't connect your computer for X days. Happened to me, very fucking pissed. Even when you're an "IT guy" think you've got it all covered it can still blow up.

Re: A case for moving away from the cloud and embracing local storage solutions

#46

Post by FooBarWidget »

motles wrote: post #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…

I use the 'bitrot' app to store checksums of files and to check for bitrot. It works by checking for data changes that aren't accompanied with a file modification time change. With this you don't need something like RAID or ZFS or detect bitrot.

https://github.com/ambv/bitrot

But of course you still need backups. The way to use 'bitrot' in combination with backups is that you don't backup the bitrot DB file. Instead, you run 'bitrot' separately on the main disk and the backup disk.

As for fire-proofing my data: I store a disk at an off-site location (parents' home), and I regularly swap my main disk with the backup disk.

Re: A case for moving away from the cloud and embracing local storage solutions

#47

Post by buro9 »

Gys wrote: post #41
buro9 wrote: post #17

Syncthing is a dream. Photos sync'd from phone to laptop making pics taken instantly available to share via desktop apps. Also add in the NAS and you have three copies before you consider RAID or BTRFS or anything. Replace Dropbox with syncthing and you have multiple folders and can choose which folders go to which devices. Put a NAS at a second location and you have the ability to power up and power down the remote…

What I like about Dropbox is all files are available (browsable) from their ios app. Do you happen to use a similar app for remote browsing?

I use Tailscale to make my home network available from my phone, and then an app called Cx File Explorer to be able to fully navigate the file systems involved and view or download any file from it.

I also use Plex to get all media on my phone, and that's actually my primary interface and so I very seldom ever need to ensure I'm connected to Tailscale or browsing, as what I need to access via phone is not usually files, it's usually media. If it is files, I tend to have a laptop on me and that also has Tailscale, so also benefits from just accessing it all as if it's local.

The only part of this I'm likely to change is Tailscale as I really dislike not being able to register account to my email and I don't have a Google, Microsoft or Apple account, and don't wish to use GitHub for this - and I haven't seen a super simple self-hosted OIDC solution for my own email (I wish Fastmail would provide one)

Re: A case for moving away from the cloud and embracing local storage solutions

#48

Post by baz00 »

Helmut10001 wrote: post #44
baz00 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I spent a good number of years thinking this was the right solution and heading towards it. I had drawn up designs for my house, solar installation and half a rack of kit. This was to run a domain for my immediate family and all services including media storage and streaming. Solar was going to be 100% grid independent i.e. not some crappy provider based install. The infra was all targeted at Debian. Then I got two s…

I know what you mean. I cannot really comment (I have a sick parent, now, too, unfortunately). Just one answer to this: > One of the worst sub-parts was the question from the kids: I want this music and then going to get it and deal with it and then distribute it to everyone. This would take hours a month to manage. There are million ways to set this up, I know. This is how I did it: People have their "music" folder…

Sorry to hear about the sick parent.

Regarding the music, mostly obtaining it in the first place is where the issues appear. Either it's difficult to get it (buy / warez / rip) and I have people with little to no technical ability and interest using it. Ergo Apple Music worked nicely.

Wait until it all breaks and you spend all night up because the kids are complaining that they can't get to their music (been there). Can point at Apple now and say it's their fault ;-)

As for trusting the cloud, you don't have to. Just have an exit plan. For me it's a backup drive and Spotify should apple go to shit.

Re: A case for moving away from the cloud and embracing local storage solutions

#49

Post by geek_at »

wkat4242 wrote: post #35
JeanMarcS wrote: post #25

Ok. So now your house is on fire. How do you retrieve your datas from the melted local NAS ? Or a buglar come and empties it. Don't get me wrong, I'm full "move away from the cloud" in the "proprietary cloud" way. But getting some drive space on a different location is important if you care about your datas. Could be in a relative's or friend's place (so almost no per month cost) or on a cloud drive (I personnaly use…

I have a raspberry at a family member's house with an encrypted backup on an external HDD I sync with rsync. I used hetzner before but the problem was I needed about 1.5TB and their only options in that range are 1 and 5TB. The 5TB option was a bit too wasteful.

I use the same, just I sent incremental encrypted ZFS snapshots. These are a game changer since the target can import them and verify that they work without ever needing the key

Re: A case for moving away from the cloud and embracing local storage solutions

#50

Post by kymki »

How is this reaching the front page? I assume everything I read is to some extent generated content, but I can generate an article on this topic in under a minute that puts forward more depth and nuance.

"The cloud may be a seemingly secure space, but storing your photos and documents on your computer provides an extra layer of control and security. There is less concern for unauthorized access or data breaches because your files are physically with you. "

Regardless of what the audience is here, this is just nonsense.

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