If you’re a tech enthusiast, you’ve probably toyed with the idea of building a NAS and your own cloud backup solution. I built one that combines Nextcloud with PhotoPrism for automatic backing up and processing of my photos, but there’s a pretty big learning curve to all of it. However, there are actually a good few reasons why you shouldn’t built your own home cloud system.
To be clear, this list is not meant to deter you from building one, but rather to inform you on the difficulties and dangers that there can be.
High initial costs
A lot of investment in hardware
If you want to start building your own home cloud setup, there are a few initial investments you’ll need to make. This might cost you a lot depending on what you already have or what you need. These include:
- Storage
- A NAS or old PC
- Fast internet connection
- Any networking equipment you might need (like a network switch)
While none of these are typically a large expense individually, buying them all at once could prove to be quite expensive. You can save on some costs by picking apart old machines you might have lying around. Oh, and you’ll be paying for electricity, too.
Ongoing maintenance
Make sure everything is working as it should
Once you build your home cloud, you’ll need to maintain it. That means installing updates, making sure your security patches are up to date, and ensuring that your home cloud server has a consistent connection. If you have a dynamic IP address, for example, you’ll need to configure a dynamic DNS to keep up with your IP address so that you can still access your network from anywhere in the world.
There’s a lot of work that goes into making sure everything is running in perfect shape, and that also includes making sure that hardware is quickly replaced when signs of failure start cropping up.
Security risks
You have to be on top of your vulnerabilities
Keeping on top of updates isn’t just for new features, it’s also for keeping nasty bugs and vulnerabilities out. You’ll need to be especially mindful of your server and everything that keeps it ticking. If you don’t configure your server correctly and how you access it remotely, it can be open to nefarious individuals online who may try to get in and retrieve your personal data.
In other words, unlike with a Google or Microsoft account where you need to worry about someone logging in with your credentials, you need to worry about someone gaining access to the actual server, too. Securing it can be a difficult task, so you’ll need to make sure to do it right. For me, I use WireGuard so the only way I can access my home cloud is by VPNing onto my home network, but a reverse proxy can work, too.
Complexity
You need to know the tech
A home cloud isn’t for everyone, and you’ll be diving into the deep end of tech for a lot of problems you could potentially run across. Not only are there the tech problems you could come across while maintaining your home cloud or the security issues you could face but there’s also the actual complexity of understanding networking and how best to configure it so that you can connect to it.
On top of that, there’s understanding what you need and how best to execute it. In other words, there’s a lot to learn, and getting started and then keeping on top of it can be a lot depending on how much you actually already know. You’re completely on your own, and there’s no on-call professional support that you can ask for.
Reliability concerns
What happens if your power goes out?
A size comparison of a PS5 (left), gaming PC (middle), and UPS (right).
One of the biggest issues can also be the reliability aspect of it. What happens when your internet drops or your power goes? All of a sudden, your home server is inaccessible. A UPS could work with your NAS so that you can quickly grab what you need off of it if you’re already at home, but if you have no internet then you’re in trouble.
With a typical cloud provider, you don’t need to worry about that, though. Your data is safely in the cloud, looked after by whatever company you’re using. If you have privacy concerns then yes, that’s a downside, but otherwise, a regular cloud provider might be a better idea.
