From the cloud to the home NAS
If you made the decision to quit the cloud (you can find some arguments in my article about sharing files over cloud services), you have two options: either buy a ready-made product that has all the features Google offers but in a personal network setting, or build one yourself. I will cover the second option in further article but for now, if you just want to get rid of Google or if you just want to experiment with a “personal cloud”, the simplest option is also the most expensive one: you will have to purchase a NAS.
What is a NAS and can it really replace all the Google online services? Yes it can and it’s called a Network Attached Storage. It looks like a very small computer case, has a small space for at least two HDDs (or SSDs if you throw even more money at it), a fan, a power button and some indicator LEDs. It makes very little sound when operating and if you stuff it in a closet or under a couch you can forget you have one in your home.
The NAS can be configured to be accessible even outside of the home network (simple and fast option) or you can protect that access further with a VPN (a minor inconvenience, we’ll talk about VPNs in a further article). The NAS can then be accessed with a web browser and configured from a web application, just like your router for example. And the best part? You can add features to it by downloading apps. Yes, apps for the NAS. We’ll see in a minute.
The main issue though is that it is expensive. I am not going to advertise, I will just say that I went with the Synology DS218 so you know where to start and what to search for. It was around 250 USD without the two HDDs it requires. Adding the HDDs bumped the price to 550 USD, so yeah. You have to be really determined to go this route. There are lots of HDD options too and I suggest you don’t go over the board. Just buy normal HDDs, I went with 2TB each, 5200 RPM and all was well. There are special HDDs made for a NAS but I wouldn’t bother with that. They are extra expensive and I don’t think they will make a difference. It’s all about marketing and you are dealing with a home solution: 550 USD is expensive enough.
But does that price justify your purchase? Can this new device that you bring in your home really replace all the things you do on Google? Yes. Here’s how.
Photos
Photos are a very big deal. Usually they are uploaded automatically from your phone to Google Photos or whatever else. Next they are organized in albums automatically for you, they are improved for you and tagged so you can search them by location and other keywords Google assigns using machine learning.
All of that is done exactly the same by a NAS: they are all designed to replace Google as seamlessly as possible. The NAS will provide a mobile app that will replace Google Photos. All you need to do is replace Google Photos with the Photos app from your NAS and you are done. All your new photos will be uploaded automatically to your personal NAS and it will tag them just like Google. There is a web app along with the mobile app with a simple and useful user interface, but the benefit here is that all your photos are on your home disks, never to be seen, scanned or processed by Google again.
Movies
You are probably using Netflix or any other streaming service for this but who knows? Maybe you have some home recordings of your family or some preferred shows that you downloaded. Either way, you are covered here too. Your NAS will have a Media Server app that essentially transforms it in a DLNS Media Server and you will have a Videos app for your phone. You can watch your videos in a browser or on your phone, you can cast them to your TV and so on. Again: all content resides on your NAS, nothing has to leave your home. Total privacy.
Music
I am not going to argue in this article against streaming music, because since you are here you probably know all I have to say on that subject. You can have all your music on your NAS, forever yours, instantly accessible using the provided Music app, just like before with the Videos app. With recommendations on what to listen and everything.
Documents
Now we are really getting into it. Google Docs? Yeah it’s a pretty big deal. You think Google has an edge over your shiny new NAS? No, it doesn’t. Synology, ASUS and QNap for example also have a full office productivity suites with online collaboration included (and I am sure others have too, I haven’t checked). For Synology it’s called Synology Office. You install it on your NAS and you can use it in your browsers or with the mobile apps. It has all the features you already get with Google Docs plus the privacy benefit.
Email, Calendar and Contacts
Yep, you can have all your events stored on your NAS using the provided Calendar app, again fully accessible on your mobile and in the browser. Same for email client which will allow you to save all your email to a local NAS folder for backup. And of course, a Contacts app. The calendar and the contacts are stored on compatible caldav and carddav server apps so you can use Thunderbird, Outlook or any email client to sync and use them.
Files
Of course, this is the main thing as the NAS is mainly a file storage tool. But again, you have a web app and a mobile app so you can easily reach your files wherever you are.
Backup
You may argue that cloud is also about backup. You never have to worry about file integrity because it’s a (sometimes) paid service and so they’d better take care of your files or else! But if you think backup is an issue, first of all the NAS will have itself a RAID configuration to increase your confidence in the files you are storing there, but then it also comes with several backup solutions, some of them getting really creative.
First of all, as I said you have the internal RAID configuation. This means that everything you save on the NAS is saved several times on the multiple disks within the NAS. There are several configurations: two disks, four disks, six disks and even eight. So if you want to save your file eight times you are free to buy the most expensive NAS. You don’t need to though. Saving a file on two disks should be enough for a home server.
Next your NAS will provide some sort of encrypted cloud backup but I won’t dwell on this because as I said, we are trying to get rid of the cloud here entirely. I do mention this option because the backup will be encrypted so nobody will be able to read it. You could use the cloud this way and be perfectly sure that nobody will see your files.
The third option is backup to an external disk. Unfortunately this means that yes, again you will have to pay for another gadget. The good news though is that you can make this backup further down the line, you don’t need it the next day. You don’t need to do it at all. Or if you have a handy external drive that you bought earlier you could use that. That’s what I did personally. I just used an older external drive that I happened to have.
The fourth option is the craziest. If you have a friend that also happens to have a NAS, you can actually configure both units to act as offsite backup servers for each other. Of course the storage capacity will drop because all your files will be backed up on your friend’s NAS and all his files on yours, but although highly creative, I find this solution the best offsite backup I could think of. I didn’t use it myself because I couldn’t convince anyone to switch to a NAS, but if you have that option I think it’s a great way to backup your files.
Other features that you never thought of
Your NAS may also be equipped to act as a surveillance server. Basically you buy a home wireless camera (or more) and you connect it in your home network. You then install the surveillance app on your NAS and done: your NAS will store the camera footage and allow you to browse it. It can also store only movement activity so you don’t waste space with empty footage.
Becoming an application server
Your NAS can also host a web server app so you can deploy various web applications to your NAS. This works best if you are a software developer for example and you wish to extend your NAS features by writing web apps.
Directory services
You really want to go overboard with your home devices and increase security to corporate and industry standard levels? We’ll talk more about this in future articles in this series but you can actually deploy LDAP login and Active Directory services on your NAS. I won’t get too much into this because we’ll talk more about it later but yes, you also have this option available.
So having said all that, I do not wish to advertise for any NAS on the market and I don’t want to make it sound better than it is. I don’t want to convince you to buy a NAS because it’s a very expensive option. But I just want to lay down all the features you can expect from such a machine because when I left Google for a personal cloud, when I started researching about the feature a NAS can offer I was extremely surprised. I had no idea that all the services offered by Google, some free and others paid, are all available as web and mobile apps on a personal NAS.
Granted, it’s expensive and we’ll talk in further articles about a cheaper option, but if you are new to all this and you simply want the best and fastest option out of the Google or Microsoft cloud and don’t really want to tinker with settings or build a home server, this is the option for you. It doesn’t get any easier than this. The NAS is a fully featured personal cloud solution. If you think Google or Microsoft has an edge over your personal cloud, I hope this article at least makes you question that thought.
In the next articles I will start writing about building your own NAS using a very cheap Raspberry PI but the articles will become more and more technical because the solutions will involve more and more configuration and tinkering. Of course I will talk about every step in detail and will make it easy for anyone to understand so I encourage you to read them even if you don’t plan on going that route.
My target is to help anyone interested to leave the Google or Microsoft cloud and find a secure and private space in their home network for sharing their files. Stick around and as always, if you have any questions or would like details in some areas I don’t cover, leave a comment and I will answer and update the article. See you around!
