Minimum components
- hot backup – external hard drive. In practice, 1Tb will probably be enough (we don’t consider amateurs and video professionals). About 6tr.
- cold backup – we do it to the cloud with encryption. Most likely for free (within the free limits) for basic data (and not for all on an external hard drive). You can also find / buy a USB flash drive and duplicate especially important data on it to increase the reliability of storage. Naturally, it should be stored mainly in some other room.
- server - any computer with 16GB of RAM, 512GB SSD, 32GB USB flash drive for the operating system. If you take a new and small one, then about 16tr. But you can buy a used one or even assemble it from unused ones from yourself or friends (for example, some old laptop thread). We connect an external hard drive (hot backup) to this server.
How to configure
There have already been many articles on this topic. Basic steps:
- Setting up the ability to turn on the server over the network. We configure this activation on our main device.
- Similarly with the shutdown.
- Install the OS on the server.
- We set up KopiaUI for backups on our devices.
- Launch NextCloud and other applications on the server.
- If there are mobile devices, then we use NextCloud.
Actually, everything works after that.
And if it’s too difficult?
Yes, you can simplify it even more:
- a flash drive as a cold backup and its manual update (if necessary)
- A NAS system instead of a server is clearly more expensive (from 16tr https://www.synology.com/ru-ru/products/DS120j / https://www.dns-shop.ru/product/0c817a18e252ed20/setevoe-hranilise-nas-synology-ds120j / + 1Tb 6tr hard drive = from 25tr), but everything is pre-installed, in Russian, and completely configured among themselves. DS120j is unlikely to pull NextCloud, but just file sharing is there, it’s quite enough.
- there is essentially no hot backup (or you can configure it for important data to the cloud)
In general, that’s why everything often starts with NAS systems, and then the user is determined whether this is enough or something else is needed additionally.
What did I get
- cold backups – ZyXEL NAS326
- hot backups – TrueNAS on Beelink U59
- applications – MicroOS on Beelink U59 and a little on TrueNAS (which is related to downloading files, since they are still uploaded there)
- a separate machine for experiments using virtual machines (absolutely optional)
- a few technical applications on OrangePi (vpn, dns, home page) – according to the capabilities of the router in a very small case. It is always on, the rest are turned on as needed/ scheduled. If the main router was good enough in settings, then this one would not be needed (except that you would have to think about how to replace the home page with local applications on your computer/phone).
The idea with a home cloud is that you will need more than one server and the system should be reconfigured in a more or less transparent way. This is interesting, but in fact it is not necessary yet. In general, everything turned out to be what I wanted. In this regard, this is most likely the last article in the series about IT at home, then there will be more about programming.