Family Cloud is a self-hosted cloud storage and media server designed to provide secure file management, private sharing, and media streaming with full data ownership. It is built with a modern, scalable architecture focused on performance, security, and extensibility.
Warning: This project is currently unfinished and under heavy development. Features, APIs, architecture, and data formats may change at any time. Do not use this project in production environments.
Family Cloud aims to become a private cloud platform for individuals and families, combining object storage, media streaming, and access control into a unified system.
Key goals:
- Full control over data and infrastructure
- High-performance backend
- Secure multi-user environment
- API-first architecture for web and mobile clients
- Modular and extensible design
- Backend: Rust
- Storage: Object storage (RustFS / S3-compatible)
- Database: PostgreSQL (files/folders metadata, users, permissions)
- API Layer: HTTP/REST
- Deployment: Docker-based containers
Take a look to all API endpoints that are currently implemented: endpoints
- every user has his own bucket where database user_id= RustFS bucket_name.
- files metadata are stored in postgres database.
- files objects bytes are stored in RustFS (aws S3 compatible), where database file_id = file Rustfs key.
- folders are logical and stored in postgres.
- core-storage endpoints : {upload, download ,delete , share ,move,copy}.
- full manual authentication endpoints : {signup(email,password), login, pass-reset, change-email ,.. }.
- copy files/folders : scheduals a jobs to fire requests to RustFS asking it to replicate existing file with new given key(new file_id).
- move files/folders is logical in database, requires to check to circular dependencies.
and more ...
Future architecture [COW (copy on write) or reference based architecture for files deduplication] :
- authentication is portable (let master user choose and pick the appropriate method when deploy his instance , {0auth, email/password , ...etc })
- all files objects blobs are stored in one giant RustFS bucket.
- no need for every user to create his own bucket.
- database is the source of truth , it maps what user has of files/folders, and maps blobs ids to the file that may consist of.
- COW core architecture : where we duplicate the files copies in database no need to fire requests to RustFS.
- COW : helps reduce storage usage by not duplicating the existing file blobs.
- files are chunked , hashed and stored in RustFS with maximum ~ 5MB size.
- if user requests to copy a file , it directly creates a logical copy in database and increment file copies counter.
- if user deletes a file , the file copies decrements and if equals to 0 it schedule an
apalisjob to later delete file from RustFS. - user can share files with friends and families and it can have the copy button to quickly take the copy.
The advantage is: copy, delete, move and share operations becomes instantly efficient, because everything is treated logically in the database and rarely the need to access RustFS(only on upload/download).
This architecture is fully implemented by dropbox on their own cloud, have been proven to be super efficient.
For more in depth information take a look at the research paper: research.pdf
Most cloud solutions trade privacy and control for convenience. Family Cloud is built to reverse this trade-off by enabling users to run their own cloud infrastructure with modern capabilities and developer-friendly design.
This project is experimental and evolving rapidly. Expect breaking changes and incomplete features.
