I am afraid I will annoy you a bit with my question but this is my last attempt of finding a suitable Nextcloud provider.
Wanted:
Cloud for family pictures (> 3 devices), all sharing the same cloud
⼠500 GB space | ⤠10 ⏠/ Mo.
Location: Germany or Europe if possible, preferably not in the U.S.
Professional provider (no data loss or frequent downtime, ISO certified if possible)
âzero-knowledge encryptionâ
All I want is to store and share our family pictures. No need for a VPS and all the other options I do not understand, I guess. If I get all the features which I get on sync.com, I am perfectly happy. Also, I just want to use the service, and I simply would not know how to configure the server etc.
I am a big proponent of open source, otherwise I will opt for sync.com or owncloud.org if they have cheaper hosting providers.
Hi, thanks. I really like their offers. Only problem is that they do not offer âzero-knowledge-encryptionâ meaning they have access to the keys which disqualifies them for me. But thanks for your advise
Iâve reached out to them a few days but havenât heard back. How are they when it comes to updates, like full versions?
One provider I emailed wasnât clear on if they update, say from 13 to 14 (an update I wasnât able to do via the Nextcloud admin panel).
Also, how does your admin overview look? Any warnings? Again, self-hosting I have had to fix things manually, like the background job. So I was wondering if Hetzner passes the Nextcloud admin overview or at least fixes issues there if you request help?
I am giving them a try but I have never used a cloud. If I am able to, I will respond to your questions soon. They seem to be quite a slick company and the only affordable one out there.
Super smooth and quick automatic setup. Running Nextcloud 15.0.2. Impressed so far. Only the security concerns remain, but I assume that they are largely unjustified. You should definitely give them a try - German ISO-certified servers, green energy, great prices. I hope I have not fallen for a marketing trap. But even so, I can cancel the service monthly.
the last 15 years I work with Hetzner.
Multiple domains, different databases and nextclouds as well.
Besides the price I like to promote their service.
Really reliable and fast.
The downside of any provider is the privacy.
My recommendation would be:
Get a Raspberry Pi and play arround. As soon as you feel comfortable with self hosting you can switch from any provider to your own.
Appreciate the response. Thanks! I see youâre in Germany so it must be very good for you. Iâm in Canada, so part of me is happy that if I choose Hetzner, my data will not be in North America. The other part of me gets concerned with speed of syncing and sharing files. Of course, this is 2019, speeds are pretty good. I may have to take the dive. Does Hetzner offer any incentives to you as a user if you recommend others? I will happily use your link or code, if such a thing exists.
My only concern is not being able to fix issues that Iâve run into self-hosting. Iâm curious what the Settings> Administration> Overview says, if anything.
Testing a demo of Open IT Store, I get the following errors:
As I test the server you set up, I see the following warnings in Nextcloud:
There are some errors regarding your setup.
Last background job execution ran 12 hours ago. Something seems wrong. Check the background job settings.
You are currently running PHP 7.0.32-0ubuntu0.16.04.1. Upgrade your PHP version to take advantage of performance and security updates provided by the PHP Group as soon as your distribution supports it.
Both issues are easily fixed when I have ssh access (well, now that I know how), but without it, I will rely on the fully-managed host. (Open IT Store says âwe are working on the cron job issue.â)
If Hetznerâs Nextcloud fully-managed servers have no warnings in the admin overview, Iâm all in. Thanks in advanced for letting me know.
May i add to that recommendation that there are better options than the raspberrys, just look on which sbcâs the nextcloudpi images are available, these images are easy to setup run and manage.
On hosted Nextcloud, you donât know in general how they install and maintain their setup. So Iâd go for a test account first or use a short-term subscription.
Hi,
I still need to get the hang of Nextcloud, but so far I have not encountered a single problem. The servers are fully managed and it seems that the user does not have to do anything on the technical site. No warning in the admin overview - could you specify what you mean by that, however? The traffic is limited to 2TB for the 500GB NX20 server - more than enough for me. The traffic speeds for you in Canada should probably not be of concern and still fast enough. I have no knowledge on their backup policies for redundancy. You can just test it for a few bucks as you can cancel after your first month. The registration is via the Hetzner console. I ran a security check on https://scan.nextcloud.com/ and my server was rated A+. Thanks for the referral code offer, but I do not believe they have that option and I also do not really deserve it as Hetzner.com was only recommended to me a few days back in this thread.
A real backup (protection against accidently deleting/overwriting files etc.) is maybe better done on a desktop computer, where all contents of Nextcloud are synced to. Then you restore files from several months ago if needed.
I used Hetzner services (colo rack, rented servers, VPS) for many years (not Nextcloud, just saw that offer some days ago), never had problems.
Two thoughts about hosted Nextcloud (at a provider like Hetzner) vs. own Nextcloud Server at home:
You have to trust the provider, and if you want to escape e.g. Google Cloud Services then why switch to just another company and trust that company?
Also legally there is a disadvantage: Governments worldwide try to access data stored in the cloud e.g. for law enforcement (can be anything from copyright stuff to tax paymentsâŚ). They just need the right law, and then can easily access all your cloud storage (providers are forced to give accessâŚ), without anyone noticing it.
If the data is on your server at home they have to kick in the door, need quite some people to search your house, have it approved by a judge, and you even have rights in that process - MUCH harder than just asking a provider âwe need all data from person Xâ.
Never said that RAID replaces a backup. I suggested to backup the locally synced files. Cause that can be managed with an easy to use desktop application.
I do think that Hetzner will have some form of backup, cause they donât want to lose all customer data if something bad happens (bad for reputationâŚ). But their backup would be restored without control of the user. e.g. to the state of 12h ago or so (so no proper backup from user side of course).
I totally get your point. These are my concerns as well, but I thought that somehow a transparent âzero knowledgeâ encryption in which only the user holds the encryption key was possible - I now assume it is not and there is always the aspect of trust. But given that you always have to trust the provider anyway, what is the point of server-side encryption? And are there really no Nextcloud providers which offer a setup in which only the user knows the encryption key (it should be technically possible)?
Also, hosting your own server is an non-practical solution for many. For obvious reasons, such as technical knowledge, costs but also security and the environment if I am not mistaken. If you are not an expert, it is generally safer to trust a good company and not mess with your own server, right?
It seems that they fixed the cron job issue, so it is no longer in the overview, but it was listed above the current warning about php before. So I was just saying I donât have recourse to change the PHP version (or remedy the cron job issue as I did self-hosting) because they manage that bit.
So I was curious to know if you had anything in the Admin Overview section because I feared some providers may just plop up the software as-is without doing any troubleshooting to make sure it would run smoothly.
It should normally show a message when the cronjob ran for the last time. They could have removed this part from the code as well, so you donât know if they really fixed it.
