Manage your own datawith ownCloud 2

Home-Grown Cloud

Article from ADMIN 06/2011

By Ahmad Hammad , By Ariel García

ownCloud is an alternative to the many online storage services whose data protection promises could turn out to be as nebulous as their offerings.

ownCloud [1] is an open source online storage service that lets private users and communities run their own cloud storage service on a private root or intranet server. In contrast to closed or commercial offerings like Google Docs, Dropbox, or Ubuntu One, users keep control of their data, so they can store data, share it with others, and access it from anywhere in the world.

ownCloud started life in the spring of 2010 as a KDE project based on open standards but not requiring any KDE application as a dependency. It is free software released under the Affero General Public License Version 3. Version 2 of the software was released October 11, 2011. An online demo installation is available for public testing [2].

An ownCloud server stores user data and offers interfaces for client access. The data can be normal files such as documents, music, or images but can also include records such as contacts or calendar entries. Data access is handled via WebDAV and is possible on any Linux, Mac, or Windows system, as well as on mobile devices. Additionally, ownCloud provides a convenient web interface that allows administrators to configure the system and manage users and data.

The integrated plugin system extends ownCloud by adding, for example, an HTML5 music player, a synchronized calendar, and an address book and letting you develop your own functions as well.

Setting Up the Cloud

You can install (your) ownCloud on a private root or corporate server running on Linux, Windows, or Mac OS. To run an instance of ownCloud, you need PHP, Apache, and MySQL or SQLite as the database back end. Some Linux distributions already include ownCloud packages, but only rarely will you run across version 2. To pick up new releases and developer versions, you can visit the Git repository

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