FlexCloud - Home P2P cloud of the future

For several years, a group of undergraduate and graduate students in the computer science department at the Technical University of Dresden (TU Dresden) in Germany has been developing the FlexCloud project, which will enable the P2P cloud to replace the large centralized data repositories.

about the project

The main part of the technology is home routers. They put the FlexCloud software (Linux Debian), which manages all the resources of devices connected to the router. FlexCloud forms a home cloud, which P2P connects to other routers on which FlexCloud is installed. FlexCloud has a number of installed utilities that allow you to access computers, phones, tablets and other devices connected to the local network. The main interface is written in PHP + SQLite and is called CloudRemix. The software that accesses devices and communicates with them via Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, USB, SD Card, Ethernet, is written in Java and Python. The system interacts with a centralized social network written on Ruby on Rails - Noosfero. The service provides the ability to exchange and sell web services home cloud.

FlexCloud can connect to existing services. Already implemented the ability to interact with Amazon S3.
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To date, the standard home router does not meet the required specifications, and to run the system, a router is needed comparable to a weak computer. The big problem today is the difficulty of installing software on the router. Based on the fact that the user is becoming increasingly demanding of the simplicity of working and managing any software, I have certain doubts that the project will become popular. But the idea is worthy of attention.

Project status

Over the past 4 months I have been participating in this project as a programmer. Currently working on the project: a graduate student at the Faculty of Informatics from Germany and 2 students of this faculty from Ukraine and India.

Completion is scheduled for the end of September 2013. A new research team project from TU Dresden will be dedicated to distributed cloud storage. It starts in October of this year.

useful links

You can get acquainted with the project on the official site flexcloud.eu .

From this link you will find the latest version of the FlexCloud image and will be able to test its performance. The distribution kit contains all system components, including Noosfero.

This development was presented at the exhibition OUTPUT.DD. This December, the UCC 2013 International Cloud Computing Conference will be held at TU Dresden, where FlexCloud will be presented.