Starting a cloud server, help!

[5unga]

Hello all new to posting but long time lover <3
I am currently thinking about making a backup/data server.
i have experience in tinkering and building PC's but have never touched a server.
what i want out of this project?
its intended to be a lifelong backup/ storage of data for family and friends.
Firstly how feasible is it to build a "cloud" storage server?
would you consider buying one over building?
are there any neat hacks to turn a cheap old unit into one?

where do i start?
do you know of any baselines i could follow?

have you done this? how and what did you use?

thank you

[SMURG]

I built my own file server, it uses an Intel Atom with 4 x 1TB drives in RAID 5 and handles everything I throw at it

(inb4 someone shows up suggesting an A10 APU or something; you don't need that much processing power for a file server lol)

You could look at a NAS though, I think there's a way to set up backups to a NAS from each PC, and a NAS will work for all the data storage too.

[legopc]

apu will do fine for a server 

[SMURG]

apu will do fine for a server 

 u cheeky little git lol

[legopc]

 u cheeky little git lol

wut??

[5unga]

^ lol

In my current personal set up i have around 7TB of space of which i am using just under 5, 
So as a full backup for not only me but family, friends i was thinking i would need 20-50TB with room to expand to possibly be cloud storage for a couple of small businesses 

[SMURG]

^ lol

In my current personal set up i have around 7TB of space of which i am using just under 5, 

So as a full backup for not only me but family, friends i was thinking i would need 20-50TB with room to expand to possibly be cloud storage for a couple of small businesses 

Additional storage doesn't really increase the need for a more powerful CPU, it just means that you'll pretty much be forced to invest in either an aftermarket hardware RAID card or some of those SATA splitters (I recommend the former).

Since I've never seen an Atom board with more than 6 SATA ports and I've never seen a HDD with more than 4TB of capacity, that gives you a maximum of 24TB from the motherboard alone if you go with the Atom option. If you go with something else you might be able to get as much as 48TB, but chances are you'll be needing a RAID card if you self-build. A 50TB NAS is gonna cost a pretty penny too.

[Ginz]

I would suggest using zfs instead of RAID because it has better error prevention and has better overall redundancy.

 

Let's just say you get all your drives hooked up to a machine.

I'd suggest using something like Ubuntu server running a LAMP server. You can then install a free cloud storage web server application called ownCloud. I only just installed this two days ago on a VM that I've been messing around on before my new server hardware gets here and it was relatively simple to set up. You would have to set up a zfs array, probably RAID-Z2 or RAID-Z3, and then mount that to the data folder in the ownCloud directory. With this, you could also easily set up ftp (as long as you get your permissons and ownerships right).

[Judahnator]

I got an old Dell off craigslist and installed a few hard drives and hooked it up to an old "Sun Netra" enclosure. I have an ftp server setup also.

Ftp is the way to go. Just grab yourself a domain and your set.

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