Help me figure out how best implementation for sync between (HD &) NAS & web server, both on nextcloud

🚧 Installation
1

Hello,

I have an hard drive with all my pictures, an other hard drive with all my documents, …
This hard drive is my “main” hard drive, you could call it the reference hard drive, for my pictures.

I have a NAS with all of my data on it, pictures, documents, footage, …
(It is replicated with ZFS snapshot replication to an other server).
It is on an asymetric 100 / 5 mbps line.

I have a server I rent with an hosting provider, providing me 2 TB, for my pictures. Nowadays, I have ~1.6TB of pictures.
I host too on this server my different websites for photos, one for wedding pictures, one for live events, …
I use an hosted server so that people who need to download my pictures, be it clients or family, can do it at a satisfying speed.

I have recently installed Nextcloud both on my NAS and my photos server.
I have indicated in both case my folder where I have all my pictures as “external storage”, local.

If my clients only need to be able to download and preview the pictures, all the other people need to be able to upload their pictures, or maybe even delete pictures.
As such, I am first wondering if I should rather give them directly access to my “photos server”, even if they risk to fulfill my limited hard drive ?
Or, if I federate my photo server and my NAS, with my NAS being the primary Nextcloud server (so that they can upload lots of data on my multiple TB NAS), and that all my pictures are in the federated nextcloud of the “photos server”, will they be able to download the pictures with the full speed of the federated hosted server, or will they download with the limited speed of my local NAS ?

Moreover, what I am wondering more is, how can I keep my photos server, my NAS and my pictures hard drive synchronized, without the additional data of the external uploaders being erased :wink: ?.

I know about Syncthing, and I use often rsync.
But I’m not sure they fit well with my use case.

Waiting to hear more from you,
-Y-

2

Anyone ?
I just ask some precisions about federation, and what makes the most sense for keeping things replicated and in sync, that’s all ^^

3

may be rclone.org is a helpfull tool for you.
nextcloud/webdav is one of the possible targets to clone to.

(i used rclone once in combination with restic for backup to scaleways object store. but that’s a different use case.)

4

Thank you for your answer.
Unfortunately, no, I know rclone but it’s not the answer here.

Maybe I should write my question in an other way :

When :

  • you federate server A (w/fast access) with server B (w/ slow access)
  • that people have access to server B but want to access the file X on server A
    -(file X being shared with everyone) :

then

  • will people go through the slow connection of server B to access the content of server A
    or
  • will people have direct access to file X on server A (w/ fast access) even though they are connected to server B ( which is slow) ?