[RndTbl] Is there an Muug like community based appetite for alternative to USB3 to Ethernet, to make NAS

[Adam Thompson]

While I'm no longer on the board, this - and similar ideas - have been floated several times in the past.

The capsule summary is, that with MUUG running such a service even on a strict cost-recovery-only, volunteer-only basis, we would not be able to meet, never mind beat, any of the commercial providers on cost or quality.  Economies of scale are a massive part of the business model, and we would have all the invariant costs, with none of the incremental revenue to amortize them.

The last time I ran the numbers for my own reasons (last year), what I pay Backblaze ~$10/mo for would cost roughly ~$200/month for a local operation, if operated on a "hobby" scale.  That's not a typo: scale allows them to reduce total end-user costs by 20-fold and still (presumably) make a profit.  Even more extreme ratios apply to public or private cloud hosting.

If encrypting your data locally and only then uploading it doesn't meet your privacy requirements, you probably shouldn't be connected to the internet at all...  Also, see Tarsnap, an online backup service for the EXTREMELY privacy-conscious.

-Adam


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From: Roundtable <roundtable-bounces at muug.ca> on behalf of eh at eduardhiebert.com <eh at eduardhiebert.com>
Sent: Thursday, February 9, 2023 9:32:15 PM
To: Continuation of Round Table discussion <roundtable at muug.ca>
Subject: Re: [RndTbl] Is there an Muug like community based appetite for alternative to USB3 to Ethernet, to make NAS

Who would not be better served with more back-ups including offsite
redundancies?

For good reason many of us have our own vehicles, housing, computers...?

However, but a casual read of these exchanges on having one's own NAS is
clearly not for the faint hearted.  i would also imagine there many
others who like Trevor are not found of so-called third party cloud
services with all the risks he articulated.

Wondering what interest there might be in doing another variant on a
Muug type project but specific to creating a Muug type back-up service
and mirrored for increased saftey.   One system with huge memory would
be but a tiny fraction of many of us doing our own.  I'm not suggesting
our people with know how do this as a labour of love but as a kind of
community minded coop.

Looking ahead  to security needs, I would however suggest data entry
security be as tight as access, cause one would not want a
rip-van-Winkle poison pill virus to be added for potential nefarious
wake-up if and when ever the back-up was used as a restore and have a
trogan nested within.

Eduard
On 28/01/2023 3:09 AM, Trevor Cordes wrote:
> People who know me know I *hate* cloud.  If this is the cheapest cloud
> out there, then it's still too much money *if you are a techie who
> knows
> what they are doing and likes futzing with hardware*.  (For average
> Joes, ya ok.)
>
> Your 5TB use case would appear to equal $25/mo at this place.  You can
> often find 5TB USB3 drives on blowout for under $100.  So in 4 months
> you're paying more than the DIY backup solution.  The cloud solution
> will cost you that fee *forever*.
>
> And with the cloud, all your base belong to them (and NSA, and other
> .gov with or without a warrant).  And you must trust they are having
> the appropriate level of redundancy/protection, and it's not just some
> dude with their own external USB3 drive on a Pi!!  Will you bet your
> life on the data being there when you need it?  What's your recourse?
> Almost all places will just refund the fee you paid (if that)... can't
> sue for the value of lost data.
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