Overview
The following are services I host from my NAS. These include Google replacement services intended to be used in place of Google products as well as a few other services. I’ve recently started to try and be more security conscious. Less reliant on “cloud” resources, aka Giving Google free reign to spy on every aspect of your life. I also got tired of spending $10/mo to Google, so I spent ~$3000 on a personal NAS instead. Now I have virtually unlimited storage! (Gonna be a while for that ROI…) The systems are all integrated together so with a user account, one has access to all of the services. Better yet, all the services are tied into Single Sign On (SSO) so that one user session spans all websites. No more logging in multiple times! Still working on SSO integrations for Plex. Oh, I run my own RADIUS, DNS, DHCP, LDAP, SMTP services too. 🙂
Google Photos Replacement
https://photos.derbique.us
Personal cloud storage for storing photos and video. There’s an app call “Synology Photos” for iOS and Android that can replace your default photos app! Automated backup & restore. All data is encrypted and secure. (I’m a software engineer, don’t worry I know what I’m doing …I think)
Google Drive Replacement
https://drive.derbique.us
Same as the photo service, but for files. You can use this like you can Google Docs! Stored in your user’s home directory. Accessible via web interface or by SMB share! Meaning you can network this to your file explorer for easy file transfer. Automated backup solutions also exist here.
Google Mail Replacement
https://mail.derbique.us
Yes, I run my own mail server too. The best part? No ads! And no spying from Google, either.
Email addresses are @derbique.us. So mine is [email protected]. This includes a web-mail client and also the SMTP server. I use a mail relay because my internet service provider blocks the default mail port.
Google Calendar Replacement
https://calendar.derbique.us
Ties in with the mail service to show calendar availability.
WordPress Blog
http://blogserv.local
This website, duh!
Minecraft
I run a Minecraft Java server! Feel free to join. It’s vanilla, so please be respectful to other players. If you aren’t I’ll flex by authoritarian god power and ban you!
Plex Media Server
https://plex.derbique.us
My personal Netflix. Don’t worry, all the movies & tv shows are FULLY legally obtained 😉 (Private)
VPN Server
vpn.derbique.us
This allows me to VPN into my home network to access web services not accessible from the internet. I can access my home network from anywhere on the world from both my computer as well as my phone. This is a much more convenient option than zero-trust in my opinion.
3D Printer Slicer & Web Printer
Using a SMB server, I can save .stl files directly onto the NAS which are exposed through a docker volume to Cura3D which runs inside of a docker environment with a web interface. With the slicer in the cloud, I don’t need special software running on my computer. Additionally, Cura is configured to send the .gcode file directly to OctoPrint for printing. This means I can download opensource files over the internet, slice them, and start printing all through the web. Pretty slick, ehh?
The Hardware
I run my web services all on-prem, hosted on a Synology DiskStation DS920+. This sucker has four 16 TB Western Digital Easy Store drives for a total of 64TB of storage capacity. Of course for redundancy, this figure is reduced due to RAID configuration. I found a pretty good deal on these drives thanks to a friend and former colleague of mine, Tim Beck. He enlightened me with https://shucks.top/, a magical site that gives you the best deals on hard disk drives. Additionally, my NAS has 20GB of memory (4GB onboard + 16GB Crucial DDR4 stick in the expandable slot) as well as 400GB of Synology M.2 NVME cache for added performance. The full BoM is as follows:
If you are interested in setting up your personal server, or would like to join as a tenant of mine, feel free to reach out to me. 🙂