Instead of using an Amazon machine, why not use a low-power ARM device? I have been running a small ARM computer at home for doing sshuttle, iodine, and samba

Instead of using an Amazon machine, why not use a low-power ARM device? I have been running a small ARM computer at home for doing sshuttle, iodine, and samba over ssh (with port binding) for the past few weeks and it works very well. I know tcp over tcp is usually not good but it still works quickly for some reason. This costs less than a VM on Amazon and gives you more flexibility. A nicer sshuttle command for VPN may be: $ ./sshuttle -v --remote=server_USERNAME@serverIP:port_number --dns 0/0 If you sshuttle to your home router you may be able to samba or nfs to the ARM on your home network (using tcp and udp, I think). Alternatively, SSHFS or something more normal could be used for mounting the ARM filesystem without a VPN but if you want to try Samba over SSH you could try: $ ssh -C -c blowfish -L[host_bind_port]:localhost:445 server_USERNAME@serverIP $ mkdir /Users/username/mount_spot $ mount -t smbfs //server_USERNAME@localhost:[host_bind_port]/server_drive ~/mount_spot Tools like rsync over SSH and UFTP are also nice for moving large files to and from the ARM server. I tried making an instructible on this last week but it's kinda poor: http://www.instructables.com/id/Personal-ARM-Cloud-Server/ http://www.instructables.com/id/Personal-ARM-Cloud-Server/