Benefits of Setting Up A Personal Home Server – And How to Do It

How would you like all your files securely stored away from the prying eyes of anybody? Especially sensitive information such as your Bitcoin wallet’s security key. By anybody, we mean those guys over at Dropbox or other cloud sharing services which could make your data available to the government or other agencies on request.

If that doesn’t interest you, how about never having to pay for cloud service again, yet enjoying one you have set up for yourself?

If this sounds like you, it might be time you set up a home server.

All bark and no bite? Here are a couple of things you can enjoy with a home server.

1 Storage

Storing personal files securely is one of the biggest advantages of a personal home server. Since you are hosting it yourself, you get to keep the files for as long as you want without worrying about having to pay a subscription fee or anything like that.

Since the users of this server are not much, you will also notice the speed in file transfer – especially when dealing with large files. Speaking of the number of users, home servers also make it possible to share the files on the storage device with every other member of the family/ user of such a network.

Thus, you have created a centralized storage unit where every other authorized person can get access to the content within.

2 Secure filesharing

Many professions and situations require that you receive files securely and anonymously over the internet. This is where services like SecureDrop come in.

With SecureDrop, it is almost like you get a mailbox hidden far away in the woods where your mails can get sent to and you collect them. The best thing about this service is that it can be hosted on a cloud server.

However, we all know cloud servers can sometimes be hacked and messages could be intercepted.

Creating a home server near to you makes it possible to use SecureDrop and host it nonetheless, but this time, on your own terms.

3 Improved media sharing

The first point above introduces the concept of using home servers to store files and content of any kind. What you might not have considered is that these home servers will also allow you stream the media files it holds to other devices in the home.

This makes it easier and faster to stream music and videos without having to access services like Spotify, Netflix, etc. – where you would still have to compete with a lot of other users on the same network.

A home server is also extensive in its streaming capabilities, allowing you stream such media to not only smartphones and computers but units like consoles (PlayStation, Xbox etc.) too.

4 Remote access

Much like a traditional cloud storage system, a home server allows users access their files from anywhere they are in the world. Of course, this functionality will have to be configured into the home server for it to work, but it allows you host your files safely for retrieval from anywhere.

As long as the created server keeps running and the remote access device has an internet connection, it gets to call back any and all files present on that system.

5 Hosting an email service

While SecureDrop mentioned in #2 above is a third-party service, you can create your own email server from home too.

The advantages of this are better security than what is present on most commercially-available email clients these days. Afterall, how extensively secure those options can be is limited since they have been designed for a wider range of people – of which there would be less tech savvy ones.

Perhaps the biggest advantage of a personal email server (besides the security) is in the allowance of a bigger mailbox. That, and the opportunity to have a higher maximum message size than what is commercially available.

Speed should not be left out of the many benefits a home server contributes to the email cause since only a limited number of users are on the system at any one time.

Setting Up Your Own Home Server

Now that you know some of the reasons why you should build a home server of your own, here comes the interesting part – building one of these for yourself.

The good news is that you don’t have to be like Edward Snowden to get one running. Depending on how much of a tech-savvy person you are (or not at all), you should have some fun creating your own home server yourself.

Shall we?

●       Get your Virtual Private Server (VPS) – Your VPS will be the location where this server is hosted. You can choose from a lot of options here with the fastest picks being large providers like AWS and Digital Ocean. You can also convert an old laptop or desktop computer in the home to a VPS if you so wish.

For this guide, we will be using Lunanode due to the ease of sign-up and anonymity (they accept bitcoin payments).

●       Get your SSH key – Your Secure Shell (SSH) is a tool that allows you to gain remote access to the server you are creating, thus making it important to the whole process. Follow the guide here to see how you can create or obtain your SSH key on all of Windows, Mac or Linux. Save the SSH key details into a notepad and add it to Lunanode.

●       Add your SSH key – Now that you have the Secure Shell key from above, get into your Lunanode dashboard and look for SSH Keys on the left side of the dashboard carousel. Name the key appropriately, then paste all the contents of the notepad into the field tagged Public Key. Add the SSH keypair, and it should appear in the list.

●       Launch the server – At the top left corner of the dashboard, click on Create VM. This leads you to define location, plan, OS and a hostname. Add your keypair here for secure logins too.

●       Login to the server – If all the above steps have been followed to the letter, you will now see your instance under Virtual Machine (VM). Clicking on that should return your dedicated external IP address, among other things that pop out. This IP address will be used to login to your server via a terminal window thus:

Ssh *enter operating system*@*enter IP address*

●       Configure the server – Now that you have a server, you want to ensure it cannot be accessed by just anyone. That is where a firewall comes into the equation.

Note that you will usually have Ufw (uncomplicated firewall) installed on the server already [check with this command – sudo ufw status]. A status message will show that it is indeed installed [otherwise, install yours by entering this code – sudo apt install ufw].

For remote login, an SSH should be enabled with the code sudo ufw allow ssh. Once you have that covered, this final line of code sudo ufw enable will activate the firewall.

Wrap Up

With that, you are all set up. Always ensure your server is up to date [running the commands sudo apt update and sudo apt upgrade will handle that for you] to ensure smooth operations.

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