Personal Cloud Service

I built a personal cloud service at home, covering everything from hardware to software. It offers VPN connectivity, file storage, media services, and an ML computing node, among other functionalities. The network topology is shown in the figure.

Gateway

The gateway is an x86 embedded computer running an ESXi hypervisor, hosting both iKuai and OpenWRT as the routing operating systems. iKuai manages DHCP, DNS, NAT, and traffic control, while OpenWRT serves as a bypass router, handling VPN and additional specialized services. To connect from outside, DDNS is used to bind a domain name with a dynamic public IP. All requests are forwarded to specific server and port by incoming port number through static NAT rule. The VPN service enables secure remote control of all computers within my home network and provides my family with access to Google and YouTube from China.

File & Media Service

A self-built NAS (Network-Attached Storage) server is deployed to handle file and media services, offering file synchronization, backup, sharing, and a video and photo station. For data security, the HDD array is configured in RAID 1. The NAS server also runs Docker containers for lightweight services.

Computing Node

The computing node is an on-demand server that conserves power by remaining in sleep mode until awakened via the internet. I can just start it through a shortcut button on my iPhone. Equipped with an RTX 2080 Ti (installed in 2018), it can be accessed remotely through SSH or VNC (Virtual Network Computing).