Cloud Storage without Cloud Storage Providers - Possible?

marathonic

I've heard talk of how companies providing cloud storage for free are likely to start charging, significantly, in the future. I know that they do charge when you go over a certain bandwidth but the people I've spoke to reckon this bandwidth will be decreased when cloud usage becomes more widespread. At that point, people will be more fearful of going without the backup - kind of similar to someone not worrying about income protection policies as they move from job to job but are afraid to go without it after the first company provides it in their benefits package.

RAID1 storage with a 2-bay NAS device will protect you against failure of a drive but not against a worm wiping out everything or a fire in your home.

With that in mind, and taking into consideration that some people either don't want to trust a cloud storage company with their data or don't want to expose themselves to the changing pricing models of these companies, what are the options for personal cloud storage?

Take, for example, if I were to have a two-bay NAS at my parents house and a two-bay NAS at my own house. Can they be configured to mirror each other? In this case, would you not ever bother RAID1 and, possibly, even go for one-bay options and bigger drives?

I suppose you'd probably want a 2-bay NAS in your own home configured to RAID1 and set to periodically back up to some sort of single drive at your parents. Is this easy to do and, if so, do many do it?

RichIX

I know a guy at work has two Netgear ReadyNas x2 Bay one at home one at his mothers that mirrors them every week so it is possible. Seems a bit overkill to me, but I suppose how important your data is to you.

marathonic

Probably is overkill but it's just theoretical for now.

Is there any disadvantages to this when compared to using cloud storage? What would you say are the pros/cons of each?

Obviously, cloud storage can be free or paid depending on your volume of usage but, ignoring the costs, what would the main differences be?

RobTang

marathonic wrote: »

Probably is overkill but it's just theoretical for now.

Is there any disadvantages to this when compared to using cloud storage? What would you say are the pros/cons of each?

Obviously, cloud storage can be free or paid depending on your volume of usage but, ignoring the costs, what would the main differences be?

Cons
You have to manage everything yourself.
While not 100% sure you will probably have less high availability then a cloud provider.
You will have to expose a device on your internal network to the internet containing all your important data.
You wont get decent transfer rates, if you need to sync a lot data it will take forever.
For direct app access only really the big providers are supported.

Pros
You have complete control of your data.
You can get as much storage as you need.
Its easier to keep large files, as everything can be read locally.

Really it depends on your storage needs.
You could always go straight to Amazon for your cloud storage, they seem to keep cutting their prices.

esuhl

I wouldn't use a fakeRAID controller for anything I needed a backup of, even in mirrored mode. These controllers are proprietary; you can't just put the drives into another RAID implementation and expect it to work.

So... if the fakeRAID controller dies, you're left in a position where you have two (or more) disks that cannot be read by any other device than the exact same fakeRAID controller you were using, and quite possibly, the exact hardware sub-revision and with an identical firmware version.

I know a few people who have lost data this way.

I assume these NAS devices use fakeRAID, rather than a "real" RAID implementation because they'd be a lot more expensive otherwise...

RobTang

esuhl wrote: »

I wouldn't use a fakeRAID controller for anything I needed a backup of, even in mirrored mode. These controllers are proprietary; you can't just put the drives into another RAID implementation and expect it to work.

So... if the fakeRAID controller dies, you're left in a position where you have two (or more) disks that cannot be read by any other device than the exact same fakeRAID controller you were using, and quite possibly, the exact hardware sub-revision and with an identical firmware version.

I know a few people who have lost data this way.

I assume these NAS devices use fakeRAID, rather than a "real" RAID implementation because they'd be a lot more expensive otherwise...

Its hardly a problem for a raid 1 or 0 setup.

The fakeraid controllers on motherboards cant handle more then 2tb of space anyway, so you'd more likley be using a fully software solution (ie windows dynamic discs) for a set that requires a higher raid level which can be easily ported over different hardware.

I expect the nas boxes to use fully software controllers.

Not to mention generally speaking you are still vendor locked with real raid cards as there's no guarantee different vendors will implement the raid level in the same way, the only benefit is there is likely to be more compatiable hardware and you will get better long term support from them.

epninety

I sync two NAS devices between 2 sites via VPN for my business. It's tricky and time consuming to set up, but once up it's rarely given problems over the last 5 years or so.

It sounds like you're looking at a personal solution - in which case I think BitTorrent Sync is going to take a lot of beating. I've been testing it for 2-3 weeks on a couple of Windows boxes and a couple of Linux ones (including my smartphone!) and I've been very impressed so far.

http://labs.bittorrent.com/experiments/sync.html

paddyrg

If you do device to cut out the middle-man, you can buy storage space direct with Amazon AWS for approx 10c/GB/month. This is for 3 copies of your data held on geographically district hubs, so the risks of losing it all are very low. A lot of the middle men like sugarsync actually use AWS in the background. If you want to build your own CDN, they'll do that for you too. Great service.