Overview

I was running out of my allocated storage space on Google, despite the additional 85GB I'm subscribed to. I love the idea of a personal cloud vault with virtually infinite storage, and great security and I'd love it even more if I didn't have to pay for it.

During my time at myCREcloud, I would set up QNAP file servers, ProxMox servers running virtual computers that had all the software and power they needed to work, and which they could access from anywhere with an internet connection and the right VPN, and work on Windows Domain Controllers performing basic user management. My time here introduced me into the possibilities of computing and networking that I have been overlooking.

I had a few old computers laying around my childhood bedroom in my parents house that yearned for a second life.

I wanted a system that was command line based, accessible by my phone and tablet, and had Windows WebDAV integration so I could access the remote server as if it were a drive plugged into my computer. The idea of operating a computer only via command lines intimidated me, but that uncertainty drew me into it.

I settled on NextCloud, running on an Ubuntu CLI environment. After weeks of messing around, issues with apt and snap file configurations, getting things working, breaking it, and getting it working again, I have a reliable file server.

I am using Tailscale tunneling to access the file server from anywhere I have Internet access. This was the most convenient and also safest option for my configuration as I don't have to open any ports on my home network making them available to outside attackers.

I now have 3 terabytes of storage to my disposal. I have backed up all images from all old phones into the file server, so now I have one coherent gallery of images I've taken since my first phone. It houses all of my school work so I can switch between devices and not have to figure out if the word document I was working on was saved to my personal Onedrive, my school Onedrive, on my personal or school Google Drive, or still saved on my laptops local storage.

Class Files being access from a windows computer via the file explorer

Class files being accessed from Android Phone

Features

Security

Future Additions

There still remain a few issues.

Image recognition is not currently working as Nextcloud doesn’t think the Node.js binary on the system is the correct version, despite the specified binary being the version requested. I am not what the root cause of this is. Once this issue is resolved, I am hoping to speed up image recognition by using the GPU instead of the CPU, but this is a whole different realm of computing that I am not familiar with at all and far into the future.

There is currently no redundancy for the storage. I currently have no RAID system set up, so if a drive fails with data on it, any data lost is for sure gone. This is the most pertinent issue currently.