Best cheap hardware to run Nextcloud on?

ā„¹ļø Support šŸ“¦ Appliances (Docker, Snappy, VM, NCP, AIO)
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@nachoparker, Looking for some advice. I need to build out a number of devices at home. Looking to understand what boards and OSā€™ would be best.

First is NextcloudPI. I am waiting on my Rock64 accessories (eMMC and Power supply) to arrive and then Iā€™ll deploy a new NextcloudPi instance. Looking at using Armbian for the base os and running the curl script to install. Whould an HC1 (probably an HC2 once they are available) be a better choice for NCPi? How about an XU4 with a USB3 drive? Or should I stick with the Rock64?

This is for home use only so not too much activity and use. I will be using port forwarding so I can access from outside my home.

The next item I want to setup ons a NAS of some sort. Was thinking of OpenMediaVault. Again, looking at the same three boards (Rock64 vs, HC1/2, vs. XU4). This one will only be available from within my network or when Iā€™m VPNed in. Still considering Armbian, but should I be looking at something else for an OS?

Lastly is a Pi-Hole/PiVPN server. Probably going to stick with a RPi3 running Raspbian Stretch Lite. Unless you have any other ideas?

Thanks for the feedback.

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Well, the rock64 and the odroids are fine boards. Probably the odroid will be better if you are to get a SATA drive. They are both powerful, but the Odroid is has more cores so should run smoother with things like uploads and picture previews.

OMV and NCPā€¦ havenā€™t tried to have them coexist. If thereā€™s problems having both installations together I suggest trying the NCP docker container, or maybe NCP built-in support for SAMBA would suffice for you. I personally donā€™t use OMV, I just share my NC files over SAMBA with NextCloudPi built in SMB service.

Armbian has an OMV installer in their config tool.

My intention is to build for the Rock64 once we get fully Armbian images.

Hope it helps, probably some other people will have better suggestions about OMV than myself.

edit: for the odroid, this thread might be interesting for you

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Sorry for some confusion. I do not plan to run OMV and NCP on the same device, Iā€™ll use two different boards.

Interesting on the Odroid vs. the Rock64. I may try the Rock64 with NCP first as I already have itā€¦

Then maybe try the HC2 when its releases.

Any Ideas on how long before stable Armbian images are ready? Just wondering.

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Any Ideas on how long before stable Armbian images are ready? Just wondering.

Not really, hopefully soon!

Probably the Armbian forums would be a good place to ask

166

Does anyone run Nextcloud on APU2 boards or the Intel NUC 5CPYH? Would you please share your experience with either one, and maybe compared to some ARM SBC?
After a lot of reading on ARMbian and here, Iā€™m considering going for x86 low power mini PC.

167

@nachoparker, what are your thoughts on running NCP on an SD drive on an Odroid HC1/2?

I just found out I can get a 2.5" 5TB hard drive, That would work PERFECTLY with the HC1. Seriously thinking of going ahead with the HC1 and not waiting for the HC2.

My only concern is running NCP from the SD card. I currently run my RPi instance of NCP on a usb stick for boot.

I would love to hear what you think on this subject.

Thx!

168

A UHS-1 SD card might actually be faster than a USB2 stick?

I believe NCP supports Redis now though, which means the NC database access is cached in the RAM, so as long as the 2GB on the Odroid HC1 are sufficient, overall speed should not suffer much from slow SD access, I think.

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Really? I was waiting to get one, but they are really expensive and so far I havenā€™t even seen a 5TB one! share with us!

It sounds fantastic to me :smiley: I might get one myself for my HC1

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Here is the link to the 4GB one

https://www.amazon.com/Seagate-Laptop-2-5-Inch-Internal-ST4000LM016/dp/B01C4VZO7G/ref=sr_1_1?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1514393558&sr=1-1&keywords=2.5"+hard+drive&refinements=p_n_feature_keywords_three_browse-bin%3A4990425011%2Cp_n_feature_keywords_four_browse-bin%3A8067154011

Here is the 5GB one:

Obviously this is Amazon US. Donā€™t know if they are available outside the US.

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awesome, itā€™s not even that expensiveā€¦ Iā€™ll have a look at Amazon europe

172

Rock64 updateā€¦

Thought you all would like an update on where I am with the Rock64 board and NextcloudPi.

I finally got everything I need to get the Rock64 board that I was sent up and running. I got USB boot working today and have Armbian setup and working. This is the 2GB board that TL Lim send us. I will try the NextcloudPi install script shortly and see where I get. Will let you all know if I have any issues. Since I have a USB 3 external hard drive, this will certainly faster than the RPi 3 that I am using now.

I also got a 4GB version of the Rock64 for Christmas. Waiting on an additional power supply to come from China so that I can use that one also. The 4GB board will probably be my production NextcloudPi board once Iā€™ve tested it on the 2GB Board.

Any other info you need from me?

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Mainly how the kernel situation isā€¦ can you just update with the kernel from a mainstream ARM distribution repository?

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thatā€™s great news!

so did Armian fix their issues with the rock64 build? did you build it yourself, or did you get a already made image?

if I can now build it myself, Iā€™ll generate a NCP image

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I used a prebuilt image. So far, it seems to be working well.

What issues did you have?

Will follow up again after Iā€™ve had a chance to install NCP

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not ayufan, but armbian prebuilt image, right? is it debian 9?

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Iā€™m using a Pine64 with 2GB ram, 128 GB SD and a 2TB USB drive.
Works perfect for me with an Armbian distro. Serves also a Samba server for PC and media player access.
Rock64 might be faster, but I have not seen any problems with my Nextcloud system until now.
Iā€™m at this moment the only user, will later add additional users, but would not expect a heavy load at my private cloud due to a limited number of active users.

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Not ayufanā€™s images. Itā€™s the Arabian Prebuilt image. Ubuntu 16.04 Hereā€™s the info at login time.

Welcome to ARMBIAN 5.34.171121 nightly Ubuntu 16.04.3 LTS 4.4.77-rk3328
System load: 0.00 0.00 0.00 Up time: 1 day
Memory usage: 2 % of 1928MB IP: 192.168.0.92
CPU temp: 42Ā°C
Usage of /: 5% of 30G

[ General system configuration (beta): armbian-config ]

Last login: Mon Jan 15 16:18:10 2018 from 192.168.0.26

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I think I will try ayufanā€™s Stretch image shortly. I tried to install PiVPN on the Armbian image and had some issues. Will retry, just in case I did something wrong, but I think itā€™s the version of Linux.

Supposedly, PiVPN now works on Stretch, so if I can get that working, that would be great.

Will followup here when/if I get ayufanā€™s Stretch image working with u-boot.

180

I have nextcloud up and running on Pine64+ (2GB RAM) without any heating problems or stabilty issues.
I think one of the most common issues related to Pine64, is that people think it can run on a cheap mobile charger connected to the micro USB plug and the USB drive connected directly to the USB port.
With a stable and strong (e.g. 5V 4A) power supply connected to the Pine64 at the pin header and a external powered USB HUB is it a very stable and reliable system / private cloud.
Mine have been running for four weeks without any kind of maintenance.

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181

Well, yeah, a good power source and connection are essential for these power hungry boards so a micro USB with probably 0,5A is definitely not enough.

Otherwise, the Pine64 uses an Allwinner chipset which is not well supported by its manufacturer and they also violate the GPL (https://linux-sunxi.org/GPL_Violations and https://linux-sunxi.org/A64#GPL_Violations) repeatedly. Not quite good for a FLOSS project to base anything on such a platform, honestly.

Thermal problems and Gigabit ethernet problems are also common with this board:

Rockchip seems to be a better alternative so far.

1 Like