Understanding Cloud computing with ownCloud

Cloud computing is the accessibility of different computing services through the Internet. This service comprises of applications and tools like servers, database, storage, software, analytics, intelligence and networking.

In the simplest of terms, cloud technology simply means storing the data and applications and accessing it over the Internet instead if your computer’s hard drive.

Requirement for Cloud computing

1. Scalability – the capacity to be changed in size or scale.
2. Adaptability – the capacity to be modified for a new use or purpose.
3. Extensibility – is the ability to extend a system and the level of effort required to implement the extension.
4. Manageability – the capacity to be monitored and maintained to keep the system performing, secure and running smoothly.

Some examples of cloud services are SaaS (Software as a service) include Dropbox and Cisco WebEx etc. PaaS (Platform as a service) include Google App Engine and IaaS (Infrastructure as a service) include Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services etc.

IaaS (Infrastructure as a service)
IaaS is the ability to access cloud hosted physical and virtual storages, servers, analytics, intelligence and networking.
PaaS (Platform as a service)
PaaS is the ability to access to a complete, ready-to-use, cloud-hosted platform for maintaining, running, developing and managing applications over the Internet.
SaaS (Software as a service)
SaaS is the ability to access ready-to-use, cloud-hosted application software.

Benefits of Cloud computing

1. Flexible
2. Lower risk
3. Storage capacity can be increased
4. Low cost
5. Automatic software update on OS level
6. High speed

Install ownCloud on Windows 10/11

Enable the Windows subsystem for Linux (WSL)

You can press Windows Key + R to open the Run dialog, type “optionalfeatures”, and press Enter. Go to Enable the Windows subsystem for Linux feature and enable it.

Download and install Linux app (Ubuntu) from Microsoft Store

Press the Win + R shortcut, type ms-windows-store: and press “Enter”.  Search for Ubuntu and click on get. After installing click on the Open button which in return opens the Ubuntu.

Install LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP/Perl/Python) to set up a web server

On the Linux terminal type the following codes one by one

1. sudo apt-get update –y
2. sudo apt-get install apache2
3. sudo apt-get install mysql-server mysql-client
4. sudo apt-get install php libapache2-mod-php php-mysql php-gd php-json php-curl php-xml php-zip php.mb
5. sudo apt-get –y install libmcrypt-dev
6. sudo apt-get install php-intl

Test your Windows Apache installation
Open a browser on your Windows machine and type http://localhost or http://127.0.0.1 . If the Apache page pops-up then everything is up and running. Congrats

ownCloud server download

On Ubuntu terminal type the following codes

1. sudo apt install wget unzip
2. wget https://download.owncloud.org/stable/owncloud-complete-latest.zip
3. unzip owncloud-complete-latest.zip
4. sudo mv owncloud/ /var/www/
5. sudo chown www-data:www-data /var/www/owncloud/

ownCloud configuration

sudo nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/owncloud.conf

Now what we need to do is a small change in the Apache directory so that is points to the root directory

Alias /owncloud “/var/www/owncloud/”

<Directory /var/www/owncloud/>
Options +FollowSymlinks
AllowOverride All

<IfModule mod_dav.c>
Dav off
</IfModule>

setEnv HOME /var/www/owncloud
setEnv HTTP_HOME /var/www/owncloud

</Directory>

To save press Ctrl+O and Ctrl+X to save and exit

Creating symlink for ownCloud

sudo ln –s /etc/apache2/sites-available/owncloud.conf /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/owncloud.conf

sudo a2enmod headers env dir mime unique id

sudo service apache2 restart

Creating MySQL database for ownCloud

sudo /etc/init.d/mysql stop
sudo /etc/init.d/mysql start

Creating database user

sudo mysql

CREATE DATABASE owncloud; Note – owncloud is the name of the database here

Creating username and password

CREATE USER ‘userNameHere’@’localhost’ IDENTIFIED WITH mysql_native_password BY ‘myPassword’;

GRANT SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE, CREATE, INDEX, DROP, ALTER, CREATE, INDEX, DROP, ALTER, CREATE TEMPORARY TABLES, LOCK TABLES ON owncloud.* TO ‘userNameHere’@’localhost’;
exit

Setting up ownCloud on Windows

Open browser and type http://localhost/owncloud/ or http://127.0.0.1/owncloud

When prompted for user name and password – give any username and password

On storage and database option click on MySQL/MariaDB

Login with the admin account.

If by any chance you want to uninstall Ubuntu - Click on settings on your Windows machine and navigate to Apps and uninstall Ubuntu

You may also press Windows Key + R to open the Run dialog, type “optionalfeatures”, and press Enter. Go to Windows subsystem for Linux feature and disable it.

(If you have any queries, you can follow me or write back to me for more details)