Best cheap hardware to run Nextcloud on?

@pse: On https://forum.pfsense.org/index.php?topic=120768.15 it looks like the APU2 has very bad AES-NI performance which should be noticeable for HTTPS. What is your experience in this regard?

The CPU of the APU2 is a pretty low-end, low-power embedded AMD CPU. An APU2 is probably better suited for routing/firewalling for smaller networks (no internal hard drives, no RAID and so on).

If you want to run a server, it is probably better to go with a HP Microserver Gen8 or maybe even a Gen10 (but the former is much, much better). The price/performance ratio is way better than with an APU2 (which is great for a lot of things except running a storage server on it).

HP Gen8 looks good but it is too big and also probably too loud. I am now looking into a small Gemini Lake solution which seems to be quite attractive.

In the meantime i use a

HP-T610 (30 EUR) Thinclient

System: Host: HP-T610 Kernel: 4.9.0-6-amd64 x86_64 (64 bit gcc: 6.3.0)
Console: tty 0 Distro: Debian GNU/Linux 9 (stretch)
Machine: Device: desktop System: Hewlett-Packard product: HP t610 WW Thin Client
Mobo: Hewlett-Packard model: 17E2
BIOS: Hewlett-Packard v: K30 v01.20 date: 03/10/2015
CPU: Dual core AMD G-T56N (-MCP-) cache: 1024 KB
       flags: (lm nx sse sse2 sse3 sse4a ssse3 svm) bmips: 6586
       clock speeds: max: 1650 MHz 1: 1320 MHz 2: 825 MHz
Graphics:  Card: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD/ATI] Wrestler [Radeon HD 6320]
       bus-ID: 00:01.0
       Display Server: N/A driver: N/A
       tty size: 80x24 Advanced Data: N/A for root out of X
Audio:     Card-1 Advanced Micro Devices [AMD/ATI] Wrestler HDMI Audio
       driver: snd_hda_intel bus-ID: 00:01.1
       Card-2 Advanced Micro Devices [AMD/ATI] SBx00 Azalia (Intel HDA)
       driver: snd_hda_intel bus-ID: 00:14.2
       Sound: Advanced Linux Sound Architecture v: k4.9.0-6-amd64
Network:   Card: Broadcom Limited NetLink BCM57781 Gigabit Ethernet PCIe
       driver: tg3 v: 3.137 bus-ID: 03:00.0
       IF: enp3s0 state: up speed: 1000 Mbps duplex: full mac: <filter>
Drives:    HDD Total Size: 2120.4GB (58.9% used)
       ID-1: /dev/sda model: Samsung_SSD_840 size: 120.0GB temp: 0C
       ID-2: USB /dev/sdb model: 42AS size: 2000.4GB temp: 0C
Partition: ID-1: / size: 110G used: 21G (21%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sda2
Sensors:   System Temperatures: cpu: 57.4C mobo: N/A gpu: 57.0
       Fan Speeds (in rpm): cpu: N/A
Info:      Processes: 126 Uptime: 14 days Memory: 645.0/3422.7MB
       Init: systemd runlevel: 5 Gcc sys: 6.3.0
       Client: Shell (bash 4.4.121) inxi: 2.3.5 

I added a 120 GB SSD and an extra 2GB of RAM (4GB total)

How would you suggest to measure the performance of CPU, to see how it would handle HTTPS traffic?

I have released NCP images for the Odroid HC1/HC2/XU4 (link)

Rock64 images are in the oven

If anyone would like to contribute by building or testing in a different armbian supported board, read the above link and hope in. Any help would be much appreciated!

Cheers,

Rock64 images available

1 Like

I have just installed Nextcloud on the Odroid Cloudshell 2 (Odroid-XU4) plattform and it runs like a charm. Basic system (board and case) are about 150$ and then you can add two HDD (RAID Harware controlled). A nice little personalized NAS-solution.

Nice thread.

Anyone has seen and thought about using the RockPro64 (with 4GB Ram)?

I have used/tested a raspberry Pi 3B+ but in my use case itā€™s to slowwwwā€¦

Mainly I wanted to use NextCloud to share images with friends and family but the preview is really to slow (also if I have preloaded all images to create the thumbnails just before - so they were Cached).

Also an ā€œupgradeā€ to Odroid C2 was not successfull in making this really usable.

I made some real szenario benchmarks and the Odroid C2 was defenetly an improvement, but still too slow.
(all tests have been made using a fast USB3.0 USB Stick and a ~95MB/s read, ~90MB/s write Samsung Evo Plus 32GB SD card )

now Iā€™m considering to buy a RockPro64 as it has USB3.0 and a better CPU (and a lot moreā€¦ but itā€™s also a huge SOC board).

I donā€™t know what the bottleneck is in may case - I would say the Odroid C2 has not enough CPU power for the image preview.
Gigabit Ethernet and my Upload speed is definitely not the problemā€¦
so it must be CPU and/or USB 2.0.

so what do you think?
what is my bottleneck and will the RockPro64 help on this and might you guys also do this great NCP for it?

Link to RockPro64: https://www.pine64.org/?product=rockpro64-4gb-single-board-computer

After using Raspberry pi 3, i finally gone for something more powerful - mini pc with celeron 3965u (~85 euros, w/o ram and hdd), installed there 8GB ram and 512 hdd. So much faster then Pi3, full usb 3.0 aupport and rean Gigabit lan :slight_smile: Running nextcloud installation in virtualbox on top of installed Debian and 2nd virtual machine (ubuntu) for home mediaserver

Thanks for sharing @User_home

So its even 30% faster than the RK3399ā€¦
also if its more expensive with the ram

Could you maybe termporarily share a gallery so I can check how fast the images are previewed?

I have NCP running on a Rock64( 4GB Ram) and am very happy with it. Donā€™t do much with the preview feature. I will try to do some testing when I get home from traveling.

I have a 4 TB USB 3 external hard drive connected and it works well. Not super speedy when uploading 50 GB of files for the first time, but bad during normal daily use.

:smiley:
you meant ā€œnot badā€ ?

My up and download speeds are OK even with the Raspberry Pi2 it was ā€œokā€ for me because I dont have that much data to transmitt.
But the preview was always the problem.

What board are you using @Jeffery_Frederick?

And thanks for testing it. If you dont want to share a gallery it would also be great to see a video of the previewā€¦ likely from a remote/mobile internet because that would be the real use scenario and the bottleneck thing :slight_smile:

Thanks dude

I sent you server coordinates via private message :slight_smile:

Yes, I did mean NOT badā€¦

Rock64 with 4GB.

I will test the Preview when I get home. Might share a link if I have some stuff to put into a folder and turn on preview.

@User_home: Thanks man! I really appreciate it and will test tomorrow.

@Jeffery_Frederick: The Rock64 has a rk3328 and is the little brother of the RockPro64 with its rk3399.

would anyways be interesting if and how much it beats the Odroid C2ā€¦
and of course how the Rockpro can perform

Helios4 does a new campaign, maybe somebody is interested. A board with 4 SATA ports and 2GB ECC RAM might be of interest for NAS applications: https://kobol.io/helios4/

Do I miss something or is the Helios4 heavily overpriced?
175USD for a 2GB dualcore Cortex-A9 @1.6 Ghā€¦

OK, 4 SATA ports are nice, but defenitly not with an acrylic ā€œcaseā€ that has bad heat dissipation.

The bottlenecks will here be the small ram and the slow CPU that is not good for multible users and/or image sharing.

It has ECC RAM which might drive up the price, but otherwise 2GB RAM and a dual core 32-bit ARM core is really quite a bit underpowered.

yeahā€¦ I meanā€¦ for low budget (~70USD) its ok, but you get an Intel Celeron 3965u with 8GB DDR4 ram for the price of this 32bit dual core 2GB DDR3L (even its EECā€¦ its slower and not replacable like the one from User_home).

But interessing what kind of hardware tries to get into the cloud market.