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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

#81

Post by sofixa »

ssss11 wrote: post #27
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…

That all sounds great but what we desperately need is instructions on how to do things like this for the less technical, and easy maintenance… I think those are the limiting factors for wide spread adoption

Having used FreeNAS and TrueNAS Core and TrueNAS Scale, honestly it's not that complex and doesn't require any technical knowledge to get a basic system set up with backups to a cloud location of choice. The docs are very straightforward apart from a few specific terms you might need to Google but help tooltips generally do the trick, and everything that regular users might need is accessible through a trivial web UI.

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

#82

Post by throwaway346434 »

9dev wrote: post #34

You know… I deal with complexity, redundancy, unexpected errors, hardware specs, software updates, security issues, automated exploits, and so many other things, all day. I just don’t want that at home. I’m sure it’s nice to feel in control of your stuff, but I’d rather do something with my family, read a good book or go for a walk instead of having more of the same shite I put up with all day at work.

Why not a billion micro clouds, with minimum standards like "anything you put here has appropriate backup with a RTO of ~2 days"?

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

#83

Post by jstanley »

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…

> Photos sync'd from phone to laptop making pics taken instantly available to share via desktop apps.

This isn't my experience at all. I find that normally Syncthing has stopped working, and I have to open up the app, find the remote host (which says "Disconnected" next to it with no further explanation) and tap around the UI at random until it decides to connect and sync.

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

#84

Post by tallanvor »

stef25 wrote: post #55
tambre wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have any pointers to such fineprint? I can't find it nor did I notice it when I just very recently began using Backblaze.

yeah here https://help.backblaze.com/hc/en-us/articles/217665398-Backi... > Backblaze will backup external USB and Firewire hard drives that are detached and re-attached as long as you remember to re-attach the hard drive at least once every 30 days. If the drive is detached for more than 30 days, Backblaze interprets this as data that has been permanently deleted and securely deletes the copy from the Backblaze data…

I mean, they also email you after two weeks and then again at 21 days, so it's not like they're hiding this from you.

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

#85

Post by tallanvor »

cm2187 wrote: post #79
RajT88 wrote: post #16

My local setup - please critique as you like. For NAS, I am running Windows Server 2022 (I have a rational reason for this). It hosts many things. * IIS, for my local browser start pages, I configure with "new tab redirect" plugins * JellyFin - Basically a personal Netflix for all my ripped media * DokuWiki, thumbdrive version - for documenting house stuff * Twonky - Because it's the least-bad DLNA solution I've used…

Do you store stuff on multiple disks? I struggle with windows as a NAS. Windows storage space sucks hard (particularly their RAID5 style parity which has unacceptable performances, but also I had it failing without reporting it, and it doesn't handle parity with column size >8). The native windows software raid is deprecated, and can't handle disks of different sizes. I use stablebit drivepool for a secondary backup…

Honestly, for me, JBOD works fine on my media PC. With some manual re-balancing about once a year, it works fine for me.

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

#86

Post by jbd0 »

9dev wrote: post #34

You know… I deal with complexity, redundancy, unexpected errors, hardware specs, software updates, security issues, automated exploits, and so many other things, all day. I just don’t want that at home. I’m sure it’s nice to feel in control of your stuff, but I’d rather do something with my family, read a good book or go for a walk instead of having more of the same shite I put up with all day at work.

It sounds like you may be burned out. I was in a similar position until I changed fields entirely and took a long break from computer work. Eventually (over a year) my passion for technology slowly returned. It helps that I have more time with my family now and I don't have to learn proprietary cloud APIs or Kubernetes.

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

#87

Post by skydhash »

infecto wrote: post #78
RajT88 wrote: post #16

My local setup - please critique as you like. For NAS, I am running Windows Server 2022 (I have a rational reason for this). It hosts many things. * IIS, for my local browser start pages, I configure with "new tab redirect" plugins * JellyFin - Basically a personal Netflix for all my ripped media * DokuWiki, thumbdrive version - for documenting house stuff * Twonky - Because it's the least-bad DLNA solution I've used…

Slightly off topic, on the client side how do you use JellyFin? I tried both browser and some of the iOS apps that just wrap that browser interface and it never worked well. It perhaps was also an issue on the JellyFin server itself. I went back to Plex only because it was plug-n-play for me. Just seeing if you have any additional tips here.

Infuse [0] is very nice (subscription, but the price is reasonable).

[0]: https://firecore.com/infuse

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

#88

Post by j7ake »

crabbone wrote: post #77
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…

> 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. I fully expect my possessions and my data to be perishable. Losing it in a fire is still better than giving it to others. I will cry a little, when that happens, but as a consolation to myself, I'll say: at least it wasn't stolen from one of those big companies and won't be used to harm anyone.

Why is losing data better than “giving” it (an encrypted version if you care about privacy) to others?

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

#89

Post by datadrivenangel »

Security and cost tend to be less of a win locally than you might expect. I'm a huge advocate for going local and owning your stuff, but it depends on circumstances.

2 TB from dropbox is $120 per year. A 2 bay Synology is $448. Brand name 2TB harddrives are ~$50, so all in you're looking at $550 for a reasonably nice home NAS. That will probably use around ~20 watts on average, or 1 kwh per 2 days, working out to 175 kwh per year, or ~$52 if you're paying $0.30 per kwh in a high cost of energy place like California. Assuming you get ten years from the NAS box, that puts you at $1,070 for the NAS versus $1200 from dropbox...

So you get into big questions of who do you trust to last longer: hardware or the current storage provider pricing. Also which one do you think will be less of your time to manage. You should still 100% have an offline backup for either one, so that's another $50 for both for a external HDD that you store in a closet.

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

#90

Post by J_Shelby_J »

datadrivenangel wrote: post #89

Security and cost tend to be less of a win locally than you might expect. I'm a huge advocate for going local and owning your stuff, but it depends on circumstances. 2 TB from dropbox is $120 per year. A 2 bay Synology is $448. Brand name 2TB harddrives are ~$50, so all in you're looking at $550 for a reasonably nice home NAS. That will probably use around ~20 watts on average, or 1 kwh per 2 days, working out to 175…

Don’t forget to adjust for inflation.
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