Is it possible to make my own private cloud server?

6    22 Jul 2015 16:33 by u/Mr_YUP

i know the NSA stuff is a little old but since everyone seems to be giving away your information I want to try to make my own cloud server. Is it possible to have the functionality of Dropbox or Drive but from a personal end? I'm something of a noob at programming and I have no idea where to start.

11 comments

10 u/xyzzy 22 Jul 2015 16:58

Check out ownCloud and Syncthing.

2 u/Monday_morning 22 Jul 2015 21:00

I have owncloud on a old Asus eee 701 with debian + apache2+ SQL + PHP on an external HD drive of 500GB. For one user run like heaven, the hardware was my first generation netbook. Although I though to replace it with a Rasp Pi 2, there would no big advantage beside the size.

I use owncloud 8.0.X, that works ok. Great for sync works files and be on a working trip and need some old file just because you boss say, something like... do you remember that thing that you didi like 1 year ago?, could you make some slides for tomorrow? And you are traveling on a clean new computer... jump into the VPN and 5 min later, all is ok.

0 u/Mr_YUP [OP] 23 Jul 2015 01:22

how would I go about setting up something like that? If I'm reading correctly you've got it set up to run a website and the cloud storage right?

2 u/CptCmdrAwesome 23 Jul 2015 18:15

ownCloud is PHP based, so you need the usual "LAMP" stack (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) there are packages available for a wide variety of distros which should install everything you need on a base system such as Debian or Ubuntu Server.

The ownCloud install documentation is good, if you're reasonably comfortable with Linux you shouldn't have much of a problem. If not then you may be able to find a "click-and-go" kind of distro like ClearOS that has an ownCloud package, but it seems like ClearOS make you pay for it :(

1 u/Monday_morning 25 Jul 2015 13:50

Exactly, good documentation plus normal linux skills and you are set up ready to play with it..

0 u/Monday_morning 25 Jul 2015 13:48

Yes, you have read correctly.

1 u/topical_username 22 Jul 2015 19:26

You could buy a device from someone like Synology . I've setup loads of these devices to provide exactly the functionality you are looking for (and no, i don't have a vested interest in the brand, I'm just a contractor that happens to like these.)

1 u/arthurl 22 Jul 2015 20:58

There is also Lima (https://meetlima.com/) that let you host you own cloud at home.

1 u/BunyipMoan 22 Jul 2015 23:05

I also recommend ownCloud. It's neat. I use it for file syncing, storage, my calendar and contacts and bookmarks, and it also has a great RSS reader plugin that does a great job.

1 u/alexbuzzbee 22 Jul 2015 23:45

That is not a "private cloud", what you're looking for is NAS (Network Attached Storage).

0 u/Drenki 23 Jul 2015 18:34

Might be expensive to have your own cloud, but I'm sure you could set up a personal server.