01 September 2019

Increasing cloudiness

I've been a long-time Dropbox user, mostly for making files conveniently movable and accessible to myself and family members across Linux, MacOS, iOS, and (less frequently) Windows platforms. I wanted something based outside my local LAN, so that I could synchronize when away from home. Dropbox's free service seems to be becoming more restrictive, notably in terms of Linux file system support and with regard to numbers of synchronized devices per account. The lowest paid tier provides 2TB of storage, which is far more than the few GB I need for my usage model, where I don't use the cloud storage as a long-term repository for massive amounts of data. Apple's iCloud offers a reasonably-priced package with 200GB, but lacks a native Linux client. So, I looked into other alternatives, and quickly gravitated to a quasi-DIY approach.

I've had good recent experience with DigitalOcean, as I discussed a few months back. It was easy to create another small droplet hosting a snap of Nextcloud and, "viola", I've instantiated my own cloud storage facility, with available clients for all of my platforms and enough storage within a minimal 25GB droplet to satisfy my current usage requirements. Even with a new domain name registration to address it, the additional $5/month droplet cost is fine to satisfy my purposes, and I like having my own control over it.

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