Local vs Cloud
I was listening to the Waveform podcast on my way to work this morning and they were talking about cloud vs local computing, and I have thoughts...
I was listening to the Waveform podcast on my commute this morning when they started talking about cloud vs local computing. The discussion quickly drifted into hypotheticals about unlimited storage and choosing one world or the other.
But the whole debate felt off to me, because it rests on a bad assumption: that “cloud” and “local” are two totally separate things.
Defining “the cloud”
Before we can argue about cloud vs local, we need to be clear about what we’re comparing.
People talk about the cloud like it’s some mystical ether, but as the saying goes, it’s really just someone else’s computer. If it’s a machine you don’t own, sitting in a datacentre somewhere, it’s cloud.
By contrast, local doesn’t just mean “the laptop you’re holding”. It includes anything you own and control: your PC, a server in a cupboard, or a NAS on your home network.
Once you see it this way, the Waveform question becomes more interesting. Because I think local can include your own private cloud.
My approach
At home I use a Synology NAS as the centre of my own little ecosystem. It runs all the services I rely on daily, but with the convenience you’d usually expect from big cloud providers. A few examples:
- Plex for media
- Synology Photos for backing up images from my phone
- Calendar and Contacts, all synced via DAV
- Synology Drive for documents
- My journal app
- A notes app I use for Fediverse posts, so I have local copies of everything I post
Everything lives on hardware I control, but it’s still available wherever I am.
Backups are handled locally (to a USB drive connected to the Synology) and off-site (to Backblaze B2, encrypted before upload). The result is a system that behaves like a cloud service, but where I hold the keys.
Here’s my extremely high-quality architectural diagram:
No, I never studied art.
What about security?
I’m not going to get into specifics for obvious reasons, but the short version is that my Synology isn’t exposed to the Internet at all. My router only accepts traffic from specific networks, so I connect over VPN. It’s always-on for me and my wife, so the experience is completely transparent.
If you’re thinking of building something like this, I’d strongly recommend not exposing any part of your home network directly to the Internet.
So… cloud or local?
Back to the original question. The unlimited storage bit doesn’t matter; you only need enough storage, not infinite.
Given the choice between 100% cloud or 100% local, I’d choose local every time. Not because I want to avoid cloud-like features, but because local gives me the same benefits without giving away control. My photos sync automatically, I can share links to files, edit documents anywhere, and my data is backed up properly.
The truth is that the whole premise of cloud vs local is a false choice. You don’t have to pick one at the expense of the other.
You can have the convenience of the cloud running entirely on hardware you own. The real choice isn’t cloud or local, it’s whose cloud you want to rely on.
What do you think? Do you lean toward cloud, local, or something in between? Feel free to leave a comment or drop me an email, I’d love to hear how you approach it.