Self Hosting Intro

Self Hosting

Self hosting is utilizing your own personal computer equipment to host personal web services.

Motivation

In the past couple years the cloud has become answer to every solution. Like any tool, the cloud has its place. It’s great for projects that need to server a relatively large audience and or projects that will need to flexibility in scaling.

There are several cloud storage providers that provide a seamless way to remotley backup, and duplicate your data; such as Google Drive, Dropbox, Microsoft OneDrive. However once you exceed their free tier you’re only option is a monthy subscription

Like many things in life, if you invest a little more up front, in the long run it will probably pay for itself. I estimate that I will have my current setup for 3 years before upgrading.

For my current setup I have:

• Synology DS918+ ($549.99)
• 4x4Tb NAS drives in SHR (10.5TB effective) ($427.96)

Total = $977.95

For Google Drive Storage, pricing for 10TB of storage is $49.99/mo. ROI (positive return on investment) for my setup would be around 20 months, electricty not included.

For GSuite to get 10TB of storage, you’ll need to have 5 business users at $12/user/month or $60/month. If all you needed was 10TB to ROI would be a little over 16 months for a setup similiarly priced to mine. However this is an unfair comparission since at this tier, it is unlimited storage on GSuite, and also includes email as well as a variety of other applications.

For OneDrive, it is similar to Gsuite, requiring $50/mo for unlimited cloud storage. ROI= 20 months

For Dropbox their as much as needed plan is under their advanced tier which is $20/user/month (billed annually) for 3+ users. ROI is 16 months.

Storage Solution	Initial Cost	Annual Cost	Lifetime Cost
Google Drive	$0	$599.88	$1799.64
GSuite	$0	$720.00	$2160.00
OneDrive	$0	$600.00	$1800.00
Dropbox	$0	$720.00	$2160.00
Synology NAS	$977.95	$0.00	$983.54*

*Future value of money using 3Yr T-Bond Yield rates of 0.19 base on 2020-08-13