Best cheap hardware to run Nextcloud on?

ā„¹ļø Support šŸ“¦ Appliances (Docker, Snappy, VM, NCP, AIO)
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So after a flood of posts here are my top tips and they are set-top boxes as the chipset is so fresh I am still waiting for a raw board supplier.

Firefly had them on offer through a kickstarter but I missed the opportunity wasting time with the Amlogic S912.

Havenā€™t decided yet but here is what I am watching and its a definite purchase based on the early reviews of the scheduled March release.

http://www.cnx-software.com/2017/01/24/yundoo-y8-rockchip-rk3399-tv-box-is-up-for-pre-order-for-111-and-up/ (No SATA)

http://www.tvboxnews.com/ugoos-ut5-rockchip-rk3399-64-bit-hexacore-2-4-cores-android-tv-box/

For me its highly likely Marshmallow will be dropped and they will be Ubuntu/Kodi boxes.

http://www.cnx-software.com/2016/10/21/remix-io-aims-to-be-your-99-android-7-0-tv-box-mini-pc-and-game-console-crowdfunding/ (June)

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Another interesting option is Asusā€™s Tinker board that just got releasedā€¦

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Yeah, I think the tinker board is what they had in the Asus Chromebit or at least very similar.
Its was an RK3288 but had less peripherals prob due to size.

I never did try hacking a different OS on the chromebit and should of, as the PI3 has lesser stats but Raspbian was more responsive in use.
Might of been a bit more happy about the ChromeBit running something similar to the Raspbian Desktop.

The RK3288 Tinker is a good processor 1GB ethernet & 2GB ram puts it up there with the Orange PI 2 as it probably has a bit more ooomf, for a few more dollar, with no SATA though.

PS with my OCD on SATA and USB3.0 is all about creating a device that could act as Nextcloud and NAS.
So far my best bet is the Odroid XU4 and thought I would mention these as wow NAS is still expensive.


Chinese but for Ā£26 as a 2 bay USB3.0 enclosure its the cheapest thing I have come across.
The 2.5" drives size and type is up to you.

Also I found this but only seems to be available in the US.

Then things seem to just in price and bays to something like this.

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/ORICO-Aluminum-5-Bay-3-5-Inch-Hard-Drive-Enclosure-SuperSpeed-USB3-0-Support-RAID-Tool/32380774830.html?spm=2114.01010208.8.4.kAQHz8
For Ā£165 minus drives.

Cheaper 4 bay but almost half the price @ Ā£79 and drives would turn up individually and it would be a matter of software raid (which i prefer) from the XU4. Not really sure about performance until I try.

But to be honest better solutions already exist https://www.box.co.uk/Netgear_ReadyNAS_104_4-Bay_Network_Attac_1355652.html?gclid=CKHn8uXL3NECFYVAGwodup8AZw

Its why I am waiting for those RK3399 to become available, Nextcloud, Kodi, NAS 2 drive unit or two of them me thinks :slight_smile: If that XU4 was just a tad cheaper then my decision would already be made.

For just NAS then these are pretty cool.

https://www.globalscaletechnologies.com/p-72-marvell-espressobin.aspx

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That sounds promising - Intel quad core CPU starting from $125

but not yet deliverable at the moment.

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Yeah they are nice in terms of specs, 4 GB (8gb on the posh one) ram prob much better for multi users as any spare ram in linux gets used for buffers and caches.

Still a bit pricey for me, but spent up this week buying ebay disks which actually got a bundle of 5x used WD black 650GB for Ā£55 + Ā£7 shipping.

The plan is to turn that into a Raid5 2.3Tb array and now need to think which SBC with a Sata.

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I just saw this thread now.

I run nextcloud and ran owncloud before on odroid xu4 under Ubuntu 16.04 LTS and Iā€™m very satisfied.
Only disadvantage I see is that is only 32 BIT.
Advantage is that it has 4+4 cores, 2GB RAM an I ran a 512 GB SSD on the USB3-Port without separate power adapter

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I never noticed it was only 32bit as that is a problem with docker I think.
Then again they have it going on Raspbian.

I was thinking of giving the OrangePi Plus 2 a whirl as well, but that is 32 bit as well.

My raid disks might have to wait until those RK3399 tv-boxes come out.

That is why I liked the xu4 as it has USB3.0 and probably runs that SSD well.
I think most of the chips share the same bandwidth on the Nic & USB ports which could be a bottle neck for higher i/o on lesser chips.

VARISCITE do a great board VAR-SOM-MX6 as it would be perfect as the cost/spec is superb. The Vivante GPU is OK but to be honest just need anything that could display a console.

Then again that is 32bit also.

http://www.friendlyarm.com/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=123

Back to the Odroid C2.

Bit short on Ram

http://hb.hackerboards.com/tiny-quad-core-a53-hacker-sbc-debuts-at-25/

Pines look good for price.

https://www.pine64.org/?page_id=1459

I am not doing very well with SBC selection but happy with those 5x WDC 650GB black for Ā£55, but will have to see when they arrive.

Its looking like an A20-OLinuXIno-LIME2 after a lot of looking. :slight_smile:

Just an ethernet NAS box prob.

Give me something to play with until the RK3399 come out or the t-firefly boards are released and maybe come down in price.

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I have found a piece of kit that has changed my thought path once more.

I can not find a Sata III port multiplier at a reasonable price, but I have found a bit of kit that has both and a USB 3.0 bridge at the same price I can get the cards at.

Esata/USB 3.0 Sata III / USB 3.0 UASP
JMicron JMS567 USB 3.0 Bridge
JMicron JMB575 SATA III Port Muitiplier

Shame it didnā€™t do the max ports of 5 but considering its enclosure, usb3.0 bridge, esata port multiplier for Ā£70 I think it might be a project of how I can mangle that to get a SBC in it running nextcloud.

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I need an upgrade from the RPI2ā€¦ Id like to have a little more performance, and want to have a few users in my home use itā€¦ Another device that acts as a cloud based storage uses a Banana Pi variant and can handle multiple users pretty wellā€¦Think its actually SATA as wellā€¦ (Sherlybox)ā€¦ Odroid in a 64bit flavor sounds goodā€¦ I have a Pine board but writing the bootable SD card for it can be temperamentalā€¦

Though the 2g limitation on filesizes on the nextcloud snap is a bit of a buzzkill even for a home networkā€¦

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That is prob a 32 bit limit of Raspbian at a guess.

The Odriod C2 is prob a good one, but I found its all circular as 64bit, USB 3.0, 2GB ram (4GB prefer) just doesnā€™t exist at a good price.
There is a current rake of great hardware that is so perfect and its all going into phones and TV boxes and one of them soon is going to end up as a maker board somewhere between Ā£40 - Ā£90 quid.

I have decided to play and see how software Raid plays with a Sata port multiplier on my I5 running Ubuntu.
Then when I get one of those boards or maybe it might actually be a rom swap on a tv-box to name drop rk3399 once more I will have some comparison.
Odroid C2 is prob good for a singular USB external and a good package, but for me is very close, but just short of a sweet spot.

If havenā€™t read it https://forum.owncloud.org/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=7733

So dunno but, yeah I had a Pi3 before the interest in Owncloud and wouldnā€™t even bother, but we all have different criteria.
I like the Pi3 but to be honest when it comes to I/O it kind of sucks.

I keep going on about the RK3399 and I have a hunch it will end up like the RK3188 that eventually is a sea of cheap Chinese clones.
Might be wishful thinking but actually I am betting its just a matter of time, how long is harder to say.

Currently if you do some reading about the Sata II interfaces they are processor limited and have some sort of problem that limits write speed.
After looking for a while USB 3.0 seemed a better idea.
Then struggled to find a 64 bit platformā€¦ Circles again.

Just to be an early adopter with my makers head, I am prepared to spend Ā£80 -Ā£100.
I am expecting them to maybe end up as low as Ā£50.

I am going to play with BTRFS RAID5 as its really interesting because of the way BTRFS works as only the disk needs to be resynced and not the whole volume.
RAID5 is still experimental with BTRFS and there are probs on resync, but its getting very close to complete and thought I would try and track down where it is at.
RAID5 is generally depreciated because of the need to resync a whole volume and the chance it possible to have another disk failure in that resync.
But I am presuming because of the way BTRFS shares chunks and the need to only resync the missing disk, BTRFS changes the game on RAID5 if they can iron out the bugs.

But its just my makers head and hobbyist playing, but its very possible with a small Li backup to create a scenario to write out the buffers and cache and that solves another problem with current BTRFS RAID5 apart from system crashes.

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Iā€™ve found that using an old Small Form Factor Dell Optiplex. I could have 4Gb RAM, Core i5, (bought an) SSD.
For the third of the price.
Something around $220 and the performance is awesome. I known it doubles the budged but itā€™s a prerty nice server.

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Yeah I am the same @Ark74 the Nextcloud you fixed for me was an old core2duo 2.4 Ghz crammed with 2nd hand hardrives.

120Gb system mirror and 4x 320 in a raid 10 mounted on /var

Needed a PCi Gig Ethernet card as the on board had kernel issues and a 4 port Sata III card which is controlling the Raid 10 and the onboard is controlling the mirror.

Total cost was Ā£90 for 640GB of fairly reliant storage. Much cheaper and far more ooomf than any current SBC offering.
Motherboard & processor had been hanging around in the spares cupboard for a while with the 120Gb drives.
A dead Acer donated case and power supply.
The 320Gb x4 where Ā£45 off ebay.
I just managed to get 5 640GB WD blacks for Ā£55.

There is a glut of hardware on ebay that is perfect and price wise unbeatable.

I just like playing with new toys and I am a bit of a fan Arm.

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Benchmarks Of Many ARM Boards From The Raspberry Pi To NVIDIA Jetson TX2

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if nobody mentionedā€¦ my favorite choice are the little zotac boxesā€¦ all i need, everything runs with ubuntu and it has 2x Ethernet + WLAN ports what makes them suitable for firewalls or forward proxies. Of course Nextcloud works pretty good on them:

zotac.jpg3087Ɨ1735 820 KB

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They make quite nice routers, but they quickly become expensive when going with the Core versions.

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A new x86 based system:
http://www.lattepanda.com/
Also see this review (in German): https://www.heise.de/make/artikel/LattePanda-3629950.html

A bit expensive, but due to the build in Arduino and the available sensor kit ( https://nodna.de/Starter-Sensor-Set-for-LattePanda_1 ) it might be a really interesting solution to integrate home automatisation with Nextcloud.

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It does look interestingā€¦ I like that you can get 4 gig of ram in it, although itā€™s not clear if you can just buy the 2gig model and upgrade the ram. Buying something whose main selling feature is that it is compatible with Windows 10 and comes with it preinstalled is a bit tough to stomach thoughā€¦

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Very likely no upgrading of RAM, just like any other of these SOC boards.
Win10 is just advertisement, you are not forced to pay the M$ tax on these boards.

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Honestly it runs excellent on an old PC with IDE drives and 500 MB of RAM with multiple users. The outgoing (upload) internet speed of the server matters so much more than the hardware. I think most people run into upload bandwidth bottlenecks more than anything else (especially true for servers hosted on home connections).

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The BananaPI-M2 Berry might be an interesting drop-in replacement for the Nextcloud box enclosure. Itā€™s not faster than a RPI2 but has a SATA port. See:

Not 100% convinced though as 1GB ram is a bit low, powering a SATA drive & the SBC through one USB port might be tricky, and BananaPIs (Allwinner SOC) donā€™t have a really good mainline Kernel support (still stuck on 3.10?).

Also see: