The Cloud is Just Someone Else's Computer.
How I turned two Lenovo Tinys, an HP desktop, and a Synology NAS into a private data center using Proxmox.
We have all heard the joke: "There is no cloud, it's just someone else's computer." But we rarely act on it. We pay monthly subscriptions for storage, media streaming, and note-taking apps and much more, handing over our data to companies that scan it for ads or just plain sell it.
A couple years ago, I decided enough was enough. I wanted total ownership. I wanted speed. I wanted to learn.
Own Your Infrastructure
Why rent your digital home when you can own it? From Docker containers to private clouds, take back control of your data today.
Start Styling ➜The "Why"
1. Privacy: My photos stay on my NAS (Synology). No AI training models are scraping my family vacation pics.
2. Speed: transferring files over a Gigabit Local LAN is infinitely faster than uploading to some S3 bucket in Virginia.
3.The Ecosystem: Running Proxmox Backup Server (PBS) alongside the hypervisor (Proxmox VE) is a game changer. Incremental, deduplicated backups that happen so fast you barely notice them.
4. Fun: Honestly? It’s just cool to type a command and watch a service spring to life.
The "How"
The backbone of my setup isn't some expensive enterprise server. It's a few tiny Lenovo devices running Proxmox VE. The secret sauce, however, isn't the hardware, or even Proxmox itself—it's Docker.
Instead of installing messy software directly onto the operating system, I run everything in lxc containers or VMs. It keeps the system clean and makes backups a breeze.
The latest version of Proxmox just dropped that sleek OCI image import wizard—technically allowing you to pull Docker images and run them almost natively as LXC containers. It’s huge news for the community. I haven't upgraded yet, but plan to soon.
The "Result"
With my very modest hardware setup; 2 Lenovo Tinys, HP SFF Desktop PC all running Proxmox and one Synology for Storage, I am able to not only able to end my google photos subscription, stop paying for Adobe for PDF file manipulation, host my own audiobook library and also an extensive library of... ISOs.. All stored and hosted by me.
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