My annual Dropbox renewal date was coming up, and I thought to myself “I’m working with servers all the time. I shouldn’t need to pay someone else for this.” I was also knee deep in a math course, so I felt like procrastinating.
I’m really happy with the result, so I thought I would explain it for anyone else who wants to do the same. Here’s what I was aiming for:
- Safe, convenient archiving for big files.
- Instant sync between devices for stuff I’m working on.
- Access over LAN from home, and over the Internet from anywhere else.
- Regular, encrypted offsite backups.
- Compact, low power hardware that I can stick in a closet and forget about.
- Some semblance of security, at least so a compromised service won’t put the rest of the system at risk.