As many may intuit, I like the AWS ecosystem; it is easy to navigate and usually just works.  

…However- more than 1000 dollars later, I no longer use AWS for most things….

🙁   

My goals: 

Selective sync:  I need a unsync function for projects and files due to the tiny 256 SSD on my laptop (odrive is great, just not perfect for cloud computing.

Shared file system:  access files from Windows and OSX, locally and remote

Server must be headless, rebootable, and work remotely from under a heavy enterprise NAT (College)

Needs more than 8gb ram

Runs windows desktop remotely for gis applications, (OSX on my laptop)

 

Have as much shared file space as possible: 12TB+

 

Server:  recycled, remote, works-under-enterprise-NAT:

Recycled Dell 3010 with i5: https://www.plymouth.edu/webapp/itsurplus/

– Cost: $75 (+ ~$200 in windows 10 pro, inevitable license expense) 

+ free spare 16gb ram laying around, local SSD and 2TB HDD upgrades

– Does Microsoft-specific GIS bidding, can leave running without hampering productivity

Resilio (bittorrent) Selective sync: https://www.resilio.com/individuals/

– Cost: $60

– p2p Data management for remote storage + desktop

– Manages school NAT and port restrictions well (remote access via relay server)

Drobo 5c:

Attached and syncs to 10TB additional drobo raid storage, repurposed for NTFS

  • Instead of EBS (or S3)

 

What I see:  front end-

Jump VNC Fluid service: https://jumpdesktop.com/

– Cost: ~$30

– Super efficient Fluid protocol, clients include chrome OS and IOS,  (with mouse support!)

– Manages heavy NAT and port restrictions well

– GUI for everything, no tunneling around a CLI

  • Instead of Workspaces, EC2

Jetbrains development suite:  https://www.jetbrains.com/ (OSX)

– Cost:  FREE as a verified GitHub student user.

– PyCharm IDE, Webstorm IDE

  • Instead of Cloud 9

 

Total (extra) spent: ~$165

(Example:  my AWS bill for only October was $262)

 

-Jess