[kwlug-disc] Cloud services

[unsolicited]

Yes and no.

Regardless of the self-hosted cloud service, there is redundant value 
only if a copy is off-site somewhere. Lest fire take out the home and 
it's all gone, for example.

Perhaps the critical criteria is, like you intimate, who's getting their 
fingers into your remote pie.

So, ownCloud, for example, can be hosted elsewhere - there are both 
public / commercial servers, and talking with a family member to ask 
them to keep a box in their house for you. (Problematic is if they're 
not on unlimited bandwidth / taking out some of their speed at bad 
times, during replication.)

So, more like varieties of apples, than apples and oranges. (Add in 
things like photo sharing, and ... it gets worse / more complex.)


Couple things I found out from the fire department when I checked into 
some things a few years back:

- only in about 10% (I think) of the cases, does a fire consume 
everything. It's not often. (i.e. A computer hard drive may still work.)

- biggest threat is from floors falling down. Closets and under stairs 
are stronger / less likely to burn to the ground, than other areas of a 
home. And it's arguable which is more likely to lead to an unreadable 
hard drive - falling / bouncing / sinking down from an upper floor, or 
the ceiling above falling upon it. (Computer cases are pretty strong - 
something falling would have to crush it, and the hard drive within it, 
to leave an unreadable hard drive.) [In any such situation, you have 
massive issues on your hand - whether it takes a couple hours, a couple 
days, or a couple weeks, to regain access may not matter. There are many 
other things on your mind at such times.]

- metal filing cabinets, within closets or under stairs, provide 
sufficient protection, and have far more room than fire proof cases. For 
things like a stack of backup dvds. And cost a whole lot less per 
square/cubic inch of storage space.


None of which deals with the problem of theft, of course. Fostering good 
neighbours, keeping an eye on your place when not there is thus useful. 
As is hiding a box / NAS somewhere unlikely (so the thieves don't spot 
it and entirely clean you out, if they only have time to go after all 
the obvious 'goodies') seems prudent. Like in that closet, under the 
stairs, in that cubby, or within locked metal casing like a filing cabinet.


On 14-04-04 03:44 PM, CrankyOldBugger wrote:
> We have to be careful to remember that there's a difference between an
> online cloud service like ownCloud, Dropbox, OneDrive, etc., and running a
> "cloud" in your own home.  One is public, one is private, each with
> advantages and disadvantages, but I can't help but think that we're
> comparing apples and oranges here.
>
>
>
> On 4 April 2014 15:38, Bob Jonkman <bjonkman at sobac.com> wrote:
>
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>> Perhaps we can have a shootout between ownCloud and DS Cloud at a
>> future KWLUG meeting....
>>
>> - --Bob.
>>
>>
>>
>> On 14-04-04 03:35 PM, CrankyOldBugger wrote:
>>> With all the talk lately on the web about GDrive dropping their
>>> prices, Dropbox looking at files and Ubuntu closing Ubuntu One,
>>> I've been looking at an alternative (I currently have
>>> Skydrive/Onedrive, GDrive and a purchased Dropbox account.)
>>>
>>> One thing that never occurred to me until recently was that my NAS
>>> box (a Synology 412+) comes with a "cloud" software package called
>>> DS Cloud.  You set up the server software accordingly, then install
>>> client software on your client machines.  I've set it up on my work
>>> laptop and my personal laptop.
>>>
>>> So far so good.  One problem I had was I wasn't paying attention at
>>> the server side and didn't notice that my videos and music folders
>>> were set to be monitored by the DS Cloud.  The software makes its
>>> own copy of everything when it's indexing so I actually had my
>>> server's hard disks fill up and seize when it made duplicates of
>>> these two folders.  That was nasty. I had to uninstall the cloud
>>> software then go manually clean out the index folders.
>>>
>>> One downside of running my own cloud server is that if the house
>>> burns down, I don't have any offsite copies of anything (assuming I
>>> close down my GDrive, Dropbox, etc.)
>>>
>>> A positive side is that nobody is going to be rifling through my
>>> files like Dropbox has apparently been doing with some users.
>>>
>>> I'll try to put my experiences with running my own cloud server
>>> into better words once I've had a bit more practice with the
>>> operation.  But I wanted to post this in case anyone else is
>>> concerned about online cloud storage options.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________ kwlug-disc mailing
>>> list kwlug-disc at kwlug.org
>>> http://kwlug.org/mailman/listinfo/kwlug-disc_kwlug.org
>>>
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