I thought this may be interesting for anyone who hasn't heard of Nextcloud (probably most of you have I guess). Just showing some Nextcloud appreciation 
For a quite I have been using my old HP N40L Microserver as an Unraid NAS. It is reasonably low power but I've heard different stats on its power usage. With four 3.5" HDD's the power draw is higher than I would like. So I tend to leave it powered off and only bring it online using WoL when I want to use it. I had also setup a VPN into the house and that allowed me to access the drive while I was connected remotely.
But recently I went on a bit of a learning exercise for a solution that suits me better. I stumbled across Nextcloud which can do many things, one of which is to host your own cloud storage similar to Google Drive, One Drive, etc. I also had a spare Dell Wyse 5070 leftover from another project. These seem to run as very low power (I've seen estimates as low as 3.5w at idle although I suspect mine is higher due to upgraded SSD, RAM and an external HDD). So I've set this up to run Proxmox running Nextcloud as a container. Because of the low power requirements I'm happy to just leave it running all the time. So far I have:
Completed
* Attached a 5tb 2.5" external USB HDD and made this available to Nextcloud for user file storage. I chose this because of the low power requirements and silent operation.
* Setup a domain (let's call it hadesdomain.org for now - that's not the real name of course) and pointed this to my home IP.
* Passed through the HTTPS port from my house router to the Nextcloud instance.
* Added a shortcut to https://nextcloud.hadesdomain.org (not the real name) on all of my machines file explorers so it is a network drive. I can now access any files on Nextcloud as though they were on my local drive.
* Setup my Android phone so it automatically uploads any photos or videos taken to https://nextcloud.hadesdomain.org
So far it's working really well and I can access any data on the Nextcloud instance using a file explorer on any machine that has a data connection, or from my phone. I can also access it over a web page. It also works fantastically to share any files between machines. I am aware of the increased risk exposing it to the internet and there isn't anything sensitive on there. Confidential information will stay on the NAS which is powered down most of the time and not exposed to the internet outside of a VPN.
Next steps are
* Add a second 2.5" USB HDD to allow for a nightly backup from the main data file area to this second drive.
* Setup a script to wake up the N40L Unraid NAS every week so that there is an automated weekly backup to the NAS.
* Relocate the NAS to the garage (it is physically detached from the house so safe(ish) if something were to happen to the house itself).
* Setup Dynamic DNS. Currently my home internet has a dynamic IP. The IP never changes. It has remained the same for months. But I would prefer not to take the chance.
* Once backups are in place then provide my family with accounts to start using it. One of the use cases is for my wife and daughter to backup their photos to this instead of expensive Apple storage. Also because the files can be uploaded one-way then they can delete old photos from the phone and still access them - I'm sure this must be possible using Apple storage but so far if they delete a photo from the phone it seems to sync with Apple storage and delete it there too. My daughter lives away most of the year at Uni, so it was important for her to be able to backup photos automatically over the internet without needing to connect over a VPN.
I already had the Dell Wyse 5070. Proxmox and nextcloud were free. There was a minimal annual fee for the domain name. The only real cost was the 2.5" 5tb USB HDD (and a second one for backup). It's been quite an interesting learning project and it has been working well for a couple of weeks so far. Learning was the real driver behind it as I'm sure I could have come to a similar solution with the Unraid NAS. albeit not silent and at a higher power cost. Basically this solution is like Google Drive but with much more storage, backups under my own control and version controlled files.
For a quite I have been using my old HP N40L Microserver as an Unraid NAS. It is reasonably low power but I've heard different stats on its power usage. With four 3.5" HDD's the power draw is higher than I would like. So I tend to leave it powered off and only bring it online using WoL when I want to use it. I had also setup a VPN into the house and that allowed me to access the drive while I was connected remotely.
But recently I went on a bit of a learning exercise for a solution that suits me better. I stumbled across Nextcloud which can do many things, one of which is to host your own cloud storage similar to Google Drive, One Drive, etc. I also had a spare Dell Wyse 5070 leftover from another project. These seem to run as very low power (I've seen estimates as low as 3.5w at idle although I suspect mine is higher due to upgraded SSD, RAM and an external HDD). So I've set this up to run Proxmox running Nextcloud as a container. Because of the low power requirements I'm happy to just leave it running all the time. So far I have:
Completed
* Attached a 5tb 2.5" external USB HDD and made this available to Nextcloud for user file storage. I chose this because of the low power requirements and silent operation.
* Setup a domain (let's call it hadesdomain.org for now - that's not the real name of course) and pointed this to my home IP.
* Passed through the HTTPS port from my house router to the Nextcloud instance.
* Added a shortcut to https://nextcloud.hadesdomain.org (not the real name) on all of my machines file explorers so it is a network drive. I can now access any files on Nextcloud as though they were on my local drive.
* Setup my Android phone so it automatically uploads any photos or videos taken to https://nextcloud.hadesdomain.org
So far it's working really well and I can access any data on the Nextcloud instance using a file explorer on any machine that has a data connection, or from my phone. I can also access it over a web page. It also works fantastically to share any files between machines. I am aware of the increased risk exposing it to the internet and there isn't anything sensitive on there. Confidential information will stay on the NAS which is powered down most of the time and not exposed to the internet outside of a VPN.
Next steps are
* Add a second 2.5" USB HDD to allow for a nightly backup from the main data file area to this second drive.
* Setup a script to wake up the N40L Unraid NAS every week so that there is an automated weekly backup to the NAS.
* Relocate the NAS to the garage (it is physically detached from the house so safe(ish) if something were to happen to the house itself).
* Setup Dynamic DNS. Currently my home internet has a dynamic IP. The IP never changes. It has remained the same for months. But I would prefer not to take the chance.
* Once backups are in place then provide my family with accounts to start using it. One of the use cases is for my wife and daughter to backup their photos to this instead of expensive Apple storage. Also because the files can be uploaded one-way then they can delete old photos from the phone and still access them - I'm sure this must be possible using Apple storage but so far if they delete a photo from the phone it seems to sync with Apple storage and delete it there too. My daughter lives away most of the year at Uni, so it was important for her to be able to backup photos automatically over the internet without needing to connect over a VPN.
I already had the Dell Wyse 5070. Proxmox and nextcloud were free. There was a minimal annual fee for the domain name. The only real cost was the 2.5" 5tb USB HDD (and a second one for backup). It's been quite an interesting learning project and it has been working well for a couple of weeks so far. Learning was the real driver behind it as I'm sure I could have come to a similar solution with the Unraid NAS. albeit not silent and at a higher power cost. Basically this solution is like Google Drive but with much more storage, backups under my own control and version controlled files.
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