Any results from the Rock64 testing? Or the Odroid HC1 vs. Odroid XU4? Having installed and tested on a VM, I am ready to purchase a dedicated box.
Looks like the rock64s have shipped already. I think I am going to get that odroid too
I am the same waiting for the Rock64 guess I might try the Odroid as well.
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WOW, I just might order the HC1. I see that I can get a 5TB 2.5" hard drive to connect to it. That means for about US $250, I can have a nice NextcloudPi installation with 5TB if storage!
I am already waiting for mine 
Yeah, Yeah, I know. Iām behind the times!
Looks like Rock64 Kernel support is in 4.14:
http://phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=ARM-Hardware-Linux-4.14
I agree with @Stuart_Naylor: the best bang for the buck/pound/euro is repurposed hardware.
Iām running Nextcloud 12.0.2 on an HP Compaq DC7800 w/2GB RAM, 80GB HD, and a Core 2 Duo E6750 CPU. Iāve had mine for years. It was obsolete when I bought it. You can buy one to day on Ebay for about US$21.
This old, SFF PC seems perfectly adequate for two users. I have no idea how many more it can support.
You will find far more than 2 if you up the ram as each user has a ram overhead.
Also the Diversity factor of users not using at the same time as clicks are interspersed will increase scale.
I am still waiting for delivery of my Rock64 and actually at the small scale my old hardware will be replaced by a new SBC SoC board that has a much lower chance of failure and vastly less power draw.
Like Krischan says Rock64 Kernel support is in 4.14 and the SoC RK3328 is still extremely new but depending on your requirements and availability of old good hardware the distinction of choice is becoming extremely blurred.
I can run SoHo to workgroups on a Rock64, the UPS and power requirements are tiny and the space required is the same.
I can start employing and partitioning on hardware without the complexity of containers and virtualization at a price, size and power requirement that has no parallel in previous Intel architecture.
Its interesting times as a similar 2gb new Rock64 is only $10 more than your extremely old piece of electronics.
I got a 4Gb Rock64 with a 32Gb eMMC and run have 2* 1TB 2.5" Sata drives on USB 3.0 adaptors to be mirrored and bench tested when the damn thing eventually arrives.
I also have a 2bay Raid unit to do the same with half the I/O.
My time could cost vastly more if I was going to continue to employ old hardware which maybe liable for failure.
So add that to the current costs of new and increase in reliability and reduction in energy and peripheral costs its getting extremely hard to differentiate which is best apart from what you may have at hand already.
Today i found out of this board:
https://up-shop.org/up-boards/92-up-squared-celeron-duo-core-2gb-memory32gb-emmc.html
Basically the Up Board. Itās a small x86/amd64 board.
With the whole stack. Have you mention this one before?
Price is starting to creep but that is a great board with 2x 1gig Ethernet that could be aggregated also with sata3.
Could be a great and extremely scalable mini server for $ 145.00 tax excl.
my odroid HC1 just arrived. Starting to update the docker container to Raspbian Stretch to try it out!
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@Stuart_Naylor, @Jeffery_Frederick, @Pantelis others
We are starting to study the move to a 64bit ARM base system. Armbian looks good.
They donāt support the RPi3 sadly, so we were looking also into
https://wiki.debian.org/Arm64Port
even linuxkit, or other alpine based stuff (even though that would be more of a rewrite).
As we are just assessing the movement for the not too distant future, it is a good moment to ask for opinions.
Obviously the downside is that RPi2 would stop being supported.
For easy compatibility with many boards, I was going for the ARM container route (leave drivers, kernels, OSs and stuff for others to solve), but also somebody suggested implementing a Openmediavault plugin
For the RPi3, this could be used if we go for the container route
Thougths?
The mainline kernels are all getting Arm support even the Rock64 which I am following is getting current kernel inclusion.
Raspberry are playing a dangerous game with the next gen of 2019 and prob a split between raspbian 32/64 as its leaving a gap where others are getting a niche.
In fact with multiarch ArmHf/Arm64 mix is possible on the same distro.
Armbian is a really great project and I think it should get some focus as many low price SoCs are hitting a really interesting price/performance point.
With NAS memory is important to maximise buffers & caches for performance and above 3GB is important but prob much can be done with 2GB.
Ram is volatile in price and we have had a hike of late but these systems are only just going to offer more for less in terms of clock, cores and architecture.
I donāt have much interest in x86_AMD64 for the type of device we can provide now.
I also feel we maybe looking at new forms of distributed filestore where a local distributed filestore can backup to cloud systems such as https://storj.io/ or http://sia.tech/
Locally I have been looking at LizardFS but there is a rake of innovation and development in this area from Ceph to xtremeFS, LizardFS is already in most mainline distroās and looks like with containers it could work on a singular board and become part of a JAA (Just Add Another) distributed device network that would seem to be a better fit for the future.
With the Rock64 both Ubuntu & Debian are getting development and support via the community.
OpenElec have a great image that has much complete and with Leia should be finished.
Many mainstream distroās will have kernel support and why I think the 2019 raspberry next release is dangerous with the Pi being emulated for footprint and GPIO.
I can see the Raspberry becoming the IBM PC of Arm architecture and a reference format.
We are talking sub $50 SoCs and its amazing what is being accomplished.
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I am going to reply to myself but because of unheard of price/performance/functionality/footprint combinations we are approaching a new era of distributed computing and storage and currently there are some trail blazers with examples such as the Rock & oDroid boards mentioned previously.
Centralized NaS is dead and a cul-de-sac and a more correct term is a NaC that will coordinate and control a series of distributed containers and devices.
We will have (Network area Co-ordinators) that will facilitate a distributed NaS but NaS is no longer a single device.
We already have devices Alfawise Z28 pro has gigabit interfaces, with dual-band 2.4G + 5.8G WiFi and Bluetooth 4.0 with 2Gb ram and 8Gb eMMC for Ā£26.25!
We have some boards currently that are a little rough round the edge and a SoC with native Sata and 2x USB 3.1 is going to arrive at one point as SoC manufactures are going to stop embedding specific hardware and make cheaper more modular systems.
When it comes to NaC/Application firewall/DHCP/DNS/Loadbalancer yes we are likely to see on a sub $50 board.
Even at home the need for HMI (Human Machine Interfaces) necessitates multi-devices that often need a local HMI connection.
Displays, keyboards, mice, speakers, microphone, webcam and so on.
Its natural to have multiple distributed devices where the lounge, bedroom and kitchen can consist of 3 or more devices that could very well be part of a distributed cluster for both process & storage.
Devices are going to become extensible and expandable vertically in stacks and horizontally as additional distributed devices.
A NaS will not be device level but a protocol and infrastructure where NaCās will seamlessly and simply automated and control device distribution and addition.
The best cheap hardware to run Nextcloud on isnāt a device but devices.
For me currently the cheapest best distro is libreelec with the linuxserver.io docker service running their Nextcloud container its an absolute doddle to install.
Then with Kodi add Chromium as a program and you get the benefit of LibreElecs āJust enoughā formula that with browser, nextcloud & kodi its ājust enoughā to do about everything.
Nextcloud needs to start looking further into federation, distributed file storage and load balancing and its all part of the distributed device / container cluster infrastructure.
Nextcloud needs to become more distributed in terms of infrastructure as nothing is limited to single device any more in terms of extensible expansion.
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this forum is trolling me, it doesnāt let me post my answer! :S
edit: finally I could
true!
Yeah, thatās why I am aiming at the docker swarm
What does libreelec have that is special? they just remove stuff to make it lighter but itās just another Raspbian, or am I wrong?
I ran into linuxserver the other day. I really like the iniciative, itās very cool.
I looked at their docker container for NC and it is very simple, as simple as it can get. It is not optimized at all and it is definitely not a consumer product, because you have to set up several containers (letās encrypt, and NC at the very least) and install docker and configure things āmanuallyā which is exactly what NextCloudPi strives to simplify, with the wizard, web interface and so on. I will try some other of their containers though, might even consider contributing bc I want to generate others such as Firefox Sync.
Using Nextcloud on the Raspberry PI is just a bad idea network and throughput wise. If there is nothing new until the end of next year (Upton had to do a lot of convincing at Broadcom to get an updated chip for the Raspberry PI 3 so it wonāt be easy to find a suitable replacement), i donāt think it is viable idea to support this piece of hardware anymore because of these severe limitations and bad/outdated performance characteristics. Tkaiser on the Armbian forum is quite right about that.
I think nextcloudpi is great but you should set it up on libreelec as your correct, currently it isnāt optimized but for low tech easy to use cheap device that is kodi/chromium/ nextcloud its crying out for a bit of @nachoparker magic.
I have been looking for a chromeOS chromiumOS distro for ages that is just simple and never thought of Kodi but actually as the cheap and easy device that plugs in the back of a TV yeah libreelec in the ājust enoughā is the cheapest on investment in knowledge of use.
Seriously nacho have a think about porting your stuff to linuxserver.io
@alfred yeah I totally agree as for a start the i/o sucks on the pi.
I think raspberry are in a dangerous position waith the next pi coming in 2019 as its just opinion but its not capable when you compare it to some of the newer boards at similar prices.
I just setup libreelec linuxserver.io on an old x86 but there are other boards that can run armHF such as the oDriod & Rock64 which are extremely capable.