Liraz Siri's picture

1) In automatic mode, you can use TKLBAM anywhere (e.g., private cloud) so long as you have network access to the Internet and can reach Amazon S3 and the TurnKey Hub. If your private cloud isn't firewalled off from the Internet it will work. In manual mode, you don't even need access to Amazon S3. You can store your backups on the local network. It's just not as easy to use.

2) TKLBAM depends on a few things that are currently TurnKey specific (e.g., a fixed starting point after installation / AKA the "appliance" concept). This isn't just some arbitrary limitation, but part of what powers the zero-configuration magic. Behind the scenes we've hand-crafted the default backup configurations for each appliance in the TurnKey library. In other words, we can make a very good guess at where you data is stored if you're using TurnKey File Server (for example) because we basically set it up for you.

Generic Ubuntu/Debian takes a different approach where the installation process is more general purpose. The installer asks you what kind of system you want, what additional packages to install, etc. So... no fixed starting point at installation.

But remember that under the hood TurnKey is just a series of Ubuntu (and soon Debian also) based systems optimized for a particular usage scenario. When you use TurnKey you are not making the choice not to use Ubuntu. You are making a choice to use an Ubuntu system we pre-integrated for you.