So you’re interested in hosting your own cloud server at home? No problem. Much like baking a cake or making your favorite dish for dinner, building and operating your own cloud server at home is as simple as collecting the needed ingredients and following a basic – albeit technical – recipe.
This said, we are going to format this post in two sections – home cloud server hosting ingredients and building the server.
Hosting Your Own Cloud Server – Needed Components
1. First things first – you need media (data) you want to load into your cloud server. Unless you have something to host on your server, there is no point in building it. Get your hands on some media or some data which you would like to host.
2. The server. For your server using an old HP, Dell, Asus computer should work just fine. You don’t need to go out and purchase a high-end blade server with vast quantities of memory, RAM, CPU and disk space. For the home cloud server, your major concerns are having enough space in the hard drive for your stored information and having enough memory for needed operations like transferring of data. Determine how much space you are going to need in both hard drive and memory by calculating the size of the media you will be hosting on your home cloud server. To be safe, pick a computer with at least a few GBs of memory.
3. The monitor. The monitor is essential for completing your initial installs of the cloud server. While you could remove the monitor after everything is installed, we recommend keeping it so you can perform routine updates on your software/hardware.
4. Operating System of Choice. This ingredient is up to you. You need an operating system for your cloud server yet the type of operating system you install – Fedora, Ubuntu, Debian, CloudLinux etc. – is wholly up to you. The one qualifier that needs to be stated is you should pick a cloud operating system that you know how to install and operate. If you don’t know how to use the command line, do not choose an OS which heavily depends on the command line.
Your four basic ingredients to building your cloud server are your media, your server, your monitor and your operating system of choice. Also, you need a power source, a stable Internet connection (do not rely on Wi-Fi) and, if your server is big enough, external fans for cooling.
Now you’re ready to install your cloud server.
Installing Your Own Cloud Server Recipe
1) Turn your server on. Install your operating system of choice. The process is a bit different than installing your basic Windows operating system yet if you can install a Windows or Unix based operating system, this task should prove easy.
2) Install and configure Apache2. To install and configure Apache2, boot your server, enter your login credentials and sign in. If this is your first time using a Linux based operating system, your login credentials will not show up on screen. Don’t worry, this is a built in security feature.
3) Enter the following command:
sudo apt-get install apache2-utils
Once the command is entered, various utilities for Apache2 will be installed. Now, change the ports. To do this, enter the following command:
cd /etc/apache2
Follow it up by entering:
sudo nano ports.conf
Once entered you will need to change listen 80 to another port which most ISP’s do not block. For example, change the port to 8080. Once changed, save your progress.
From here you are going to need to change the Apache2 default directory and you are going to need to make a few directories where you can store your media files. The names of the directories you make are wholly up to you however we recommend naming them logically. If you are going to store music in one directory, name the directory /music or /tunes. Be logical.
Configure your router. This is a very important step in the process. If you do not configure our router properly, you will not be able to access your cloud server from an outside network. To configure your router, forward your port to the IP address of your server. To do this locate your router’s default gateway and your server’s local IP address. Once located, open a new browser window and enter the gateway into the address bar. Enter your login credentials when prompted. When signed in, locate the port forwarding tab. Enter the IP forwarding address.
4) Protect your server from outside unwanted intrusions. Password protect your server and all the media stored within. Additionally, make sure to encrypt your router from outside access too.
5) Connect your public IP address to your chosen domain name. This process is also known as mapping your IP address to a domain name. Please note, mapping your IP address to a domain name is wholly optional yet highly important. The basic idea behind mapping your IP address to your chosen domain name is so you, or anyone else who wants to access your home cloud server, does not have to remember the IP address linked to it. Instead, assigning a custom domain name to your server will allow you to access it through an easy to remember vanity URL. As mapping your domain name is optional, we won’t walk through the process. If interested, conduct a Google search for “Mapping Public IP to Domain Name”.
6) Upload media to your server. You can accomplish this through FTP, dragging and dropping content, copy and pasting media or installing media using a USB/optical drive. The choice is yours. Before you transfer media, depending on your OS of choice (Linux or Windows) you are going to have to download a file transfer script. Chose accordingly.
Your cloud server should now be up and running. With the server up and running, you can take on additional projects and download additional packages/scripts to customize your server to meet your needs.
A Side Note on Cloud Server Operations
With your cloud server up and running, you are going to need to decide how you want to use it and what you want to use it for. The basic model of cloud hosting is 24/7/365 operations. For the business who operates around the globe, 24/7/365 cloud hosting is needed due to incoming traffic from global time zones.
For you, 24/7/365 operations of your cloud server is a choice which comes with additional costs. If you choose to operate your cloud server for only a few hours a day or to carry out specific tasks, you can choose to switch it on and off depending on need.
If, however, you need 24/7/365 uptime of your internal cloud server, you might think about looking into additional cooling gear for your IT equipment and you also might think about investing in excellent surge protectors. To ensure your computing gear doesn’t burn up, purchasing high level cooling equipment could prove essential. While you will not need to invest in a data center style cooling tower, you might want to invest in a few external or internal computer fans which have more cooling power than your basic summer wave fan.
The Cost Benefits of Hosting Your Own Cloud Server
For the majority of people who host their own cloud server, the major benefits are found in monthly costs. Once your server is up and running, the only thing you will be paying for is power. If you know how to maintain your server, upgrade it and generally act as a responsible admin, your maintenance costs will be flat.
If you maintain your server hardware and keep it in good working condition, your only major upgrade concern will be increasing the computing power and replacing any hardware which breaks.
This said, if you choose to host a cloud server at home, electricity costs will be your biggest concern. While a 24/7/365 server will raise your monthly spend, it won’t break the bank.
Happy cloud hosting.