&gt; Climate control<p>A 10 watt server doesn&#x27;t need climate control.<p>&gt; redundancy<p>Is mostly a matter of software.<p>&gt; backups<p>Is also mostly a matter of software. With some simple peering mechanism, you can store backups on your friends&#x27; servers (and they on yours). Though a standardized pure backup storage API for cloud storage of encrypted backups at one (or more) of a multitude of providers might be a useful option to have.<p>&gt; power consumption<p>Is a matter of plugging a plug into a socket in the wall.<p>&gt; reliability<p>Is also mostly a matter of software.<p>Now, I am not saying that running your own datacenter is no work, but running a server or two for your personal needs or for the needs of a small company should be possible to make almost a no-brainer.<p>There is no technical reason why you shouldn&#x27;t be able to buy a bunch of off-the-shelf mini-servers for a hundred bucks or so a piece that you can peer by connecting them with an ethernet or USB cable or whatever might be appropriate and that you then connect to the internet wherever you like and that automatically replicate their data among each other and allow easy installation of additional services via a web interface, with automatic software upgrades, and allow you to rebuild the state of a broken server by connecting a new one and clicking on a few buttons in the web interface ... well, there are many ways to solve the details, but my point is: cloud providers also don&#x27;t employ one admin per machine, but rather automate the management of their machines to make things efficient--there isn&#x27;t really any reason why much of the same automation strategies (which are mostly software, after all) shouldn&#x27;t be usable on decentralized servers in people&#x27;s homes.