Personal cloud - Introduction

Hi all,

maybe you noticed I got huge problem – don’t have enough time to write articles :( This is mostly to my new project, I need to travel almost every week and I don’t want to touch computer during weekends.

However my new situation got also bright moments – and one of them is that I had to create my “cloud” – my fully automated synchronization of programs, contacts, mails etc between multiple devices and with limited internet connectivity. In following series of posts I want to share with you all technologies I used and procedures.

Devices

First of all, let me tell you about my starting situation. At home I got development desktop – two screens, 4GB ram, I really prefer to use it instead of laptop.

However on road I must use laptop – and as I mentioned before, I travel a lot.

Even though I really love Vista’s sleep functionality, I don’t want to always open laptop whenever I need information like meeting room or mail address, so third device I am using is Windows Mobile E-Ten M800.

And, last but not least, you know that it can happen that you need to access your data using internet only.

To summarize it, I got 2 computers (using them 50:50), one mobile phone and I want to have online access to all my data.

Data

Ok, personal cloud, what are we talking about exactly?

• emails
• contacts
• calendar
• passwords
• utilities
• installation sources
• configuration
• favorites
• documents
• .NET\PowerShell projects

Other requirements

I am lazy. I am VERY lazy. That is why I am specialized on scripting frameworks and automation in general – I am too lazy to do it manually, so I rather automate it.

For that reason I don’t want any solution that would require me to solve conflicts, specify when to sync, I want completely seamless solution that won’t require any interaction from my side.

Also for sources, I am sure all of you know situation when you reinstalled your computer and spend hours and hours downloading small applications like .NET framework, Daemon tools, Live Messenger… And I am sure you are running at least (being optimistical) one application, that is already out-of-date (there is newer version available), so I also wanted to automate process of getting latest available sources.

What I want to achieve is that if I will reinstall my computer, all I need to do is connect to my cloud, do little bit of configuration (ideally just run Connect-Cloud.ps1 :)) and get back my work space.

Current situation

At this moment I am fixing minor bugs and issues, however I am already running solution that (almost) fits all my requirements. I want to write series of articles describing each category I store in my cloud – so if you are missing something that is important for you, let me know.

Of course this solution is not based on one ultimate product – it is combination of few (5-6?) separate tools.