What hardware do you use for Nextcloud?
I’m willing to finally get my own cloud using #Nextcloud but I have zero clue about which hardware I should choose for home storage. It would be used for domestic stuff, such as photos, music, movies and files, for the whole family, not necessarily for work
I am using it on an Intel J5005 with SATA SSDs, managed through Docker. Works flawlessly.
If I were to upgrade, I would choose a board with a modern PCIe 4.0 M.2 Slot, because i’d like to put the database on fast NVME storage.
I use a relatively low spec KVM VPS on another continent. Remember, kids, if all your backups are in one location, you don’t have backups. You have copies.
I run the AIO master container, on a NUC (4-core i5, 32G). Family use; never any load issues.
I used a RaspberryPi 4B for about 3 years. I connected storage over USB-3 to a pair of SATA SSDs. It handled everything pretty much flawlessly for two users and half a dozen devices. We even had multiple users on Plex. dietpi was brilliant for my first home server :).
Initial uploads may be slow depending on your storage layout but in my experience the requirements are super low.
You need this for your family, and not hundreds of people? No crazy, outlandish usage requirements?
Then basically any PC will do.
before you take the jump, consider a way lighter and easier alternative - syncthing (files) and radicale (calendar, contacts). dependable, bullet-proof, super-lightweight, zero issues - everything nextcloud isn’t.
I was the happiest when I finally booted nextcloud off my network, never to return.
I do regularly have issues with radicale, for years now. One is that it does not work properly after boot. I have to SSH in, kill the radicale process, and restart it.
docker?
No docker. Plain executable.
zero problems with docker, maybe try that.
I have used it on old underpowered computers happily for years. There’s just no need for anything with high specs.
i5 9th gen. 8 Seagate Ironwolf in a RaidZ2. 64GB ECC Ram. Software: TrueNAS.
I’m currently using an i5 9500 and it runs good here too.
Note for OP though: If you don’t need/want transcoding it’d be way cheaper to get an equivalent AMD CPU just because motherboards are hilariously expensive for an obsolete platform.
I use a an Inteln Arc card for transcoding. Mainly because I also use Immich and transcode movies too. It’s great.
I most of my parts from Ebay second hand, including the CPU.
Oh nice, didnt know you could HW accel immich. I havent tried immich yet but im getting v tempted!
Going the dGPU is a good idea though, I gotta get in on that eventually.
Mine is a small N100-based machine with 2 SATA SSDs in it. 16 GB RAM and it also runs many other services.
The better the hardware and connection, the faster the interface will be.
I’ve got a small Enterprise customer running on a Dell r710, 2gb ram to the slightly custom docker image for nc, 4gb+ for the woods sit, the other 14gb to KVM to run a windows application.
My NAS, which is my old PC. Ryzen 1700 w/16 GB of RAM, which is way overkill (just need like 2 cores and 4GB RAM or so).
Hardware isn’t particularly important, NC isn’t all that heavy. If you’re using Collabora or OnlyOffice or something, you may need to care a bit. Use what you have, and upgrade when you run into issues.
That said, I’m considering switching to Seafile because it can apparently do Collabora now. I don’t use any of the NC features, I just want a Google Docs replacement.
Nextcloud sucks. Its better to have discreet docker services running for what you actually need vs nextcloud being a monolith of shitty plugins. As for hardware, go on eBay and buy a cheap optiplex tower. It’ll get you started.
I know it’s unpopular, but I’m starting to agree with you. I set up NextCloud, but I honestly don’t use much of any of it. The only part I really want is the file sync and handling, as well as LibreOffice in the cloud. I don’t care about the calendar, contacts sync, video chat, etc. I looked through the plugins, and the ones I tried kind of sucked. I also really don’t like PHP and the Docker image is all wrong, so it’s more of a pain than anything to deal with.
So I’m trying out Seafile. I didn’t realize it supports Collabora CODE, so I’m going to check that out. My main hangup is the directory structure, so I’ll figure out the FUSE FS thing and see if that’ll work well enough for me.
I literally just want to be able to send stuff from our machines, view/edit them online quickly, and send the important stuff to an offline backup.
Who knows, maybe I’ll like it, and maybe I’ll come back to NextCloud. Either way, I highly recommend people try out alternatives, because there really are a lot of cool projects out there.
People are down voting me because they’ve pledged their soul to the monolith of shitty plugins.
Even if you want all the pieces there’s way better versions of them than what you get in nextcloud. Also depending on how many devices you need libreoffice on, might be easier just to run a syncthings instance and sync the files that way. Its what I’m doing for obsidian and its awesome.
Alternatively theres also this but I can’t vouch for it as I haven’t set it up yet
My main use case here is using it on my phone. I used to use Google Sheets a lot on my phone, and I want to replicate that without Google. LibreOffice Online works through NextCloud, but I really don’t need the extra features, so I’m going to get it set up through Seafile.
I also may want to share a sheet or something with someone else so we can both edit it, but that’s not a hard requirement.
Lemme know how seafile works for you. I’m going to be replacing google cloud myself soon
I switched from nextcloud to seafile. Their app has paid file search for android app. Also full text search is paid. The docker also seems to crash a lot.
I’ve been testing owncloud ocis and it works really well. Just trying to figure out a few things for single sign on, but the app otherwise works really well.
Nextcloud was too high fallutin for me. I share a zfs pool with proxmox’s file server appliance.
Which file server appliance is that?
Not OP but if I had to guess, probably Turnkey File Server.
I have a raspberry pi 4 with
- A Uninterrupted Power Supply
- External powered HDD for the data drive
Mine is running on a HP 600 G1 Micro Computer Mini Tower PC. Right now, less than $80 from Bezos. It’s over powered for Nextcloud alone, but I’ve also got other services running on it, including Jellyfin.
It zips along quite nicely, but I’ve also followed the guides for tuning the server for best performance.
