Setting up ownCloud

Post author:admin
Post published:2014年1月15日
Post category:IT
Post comments:0评论

I’ve spent some of my spare time lately researching on ways to have better control of my calendar, contacts, important files that I sync to different places, and such. My objective is to move those things away from big cloud providers like Google, Microsoft, DropBox, Skype, and so on. I am happy to report that theopen source solution ownCloudprovides just what I needed. I was able to set it up today and the tests were successful. Here are some noteworthy points.

ownCloud provides clients for Windows, Mac, Linux, iPhone, and Android devices, which is really nice;
Setup was easy. I did the manual install by followinginstructionshere. My web server wasTengine, a fork of Nginx. I used the sample Nginx configuration in the instruction page as the starting point, and it worked just fine;
ownCloud recommends using SSL, which I concur. I spent some time researching on certificate options, and decided to useself-signed certificate. The reason is simple: the intended customer is me and my family, therefore I don’t need a Certification Authority (CA) to tell me that I am using a site that I ownNot forking out the cash is added bonus. Note, though, that if you are running a commercial site that conducts transactions online, it is necessary to purchase certificates and enable SSL. That’s not the right time to be penny-pinching (or a 铁公鸡);
To generate my own self-signed certificate,I followed instructions here. I used the 2048 bit key. I followed the optional step 5 so that I can start Tengine without providing a password;
I think ownCloud will be great for companies and teams. If you have control to a web server, which most companies and teams do, then more than likely your’ve got the infrastructure to have your own cloud. For a company/team, I do recommend purchasing SSL certificates, unless your company/team is pretty small;
I’ve reallyenjoyed using dnsimple. Separating DNS and hosting service really gives me great flexibility in learning and testing out different web technology.