New RPi4 8GB, 500GB SSD + 6TB HD, ideal setup?

Just got my new RPi4 8GB RAM with cooler and want to use it for NextCloud.

I have been running NexCloudPi in an RPi3 for a while. It is now offline as I am not able to log in to the config part anymore. I will try to find a way to restore the login so I can at least copy out the settings…

I would love to have some comments and advice regarding getting the best setup for the new hardware.

My plans are not to run a super fast server or only use it for NextCloud. I am thinking of using the NexCloudPi docker image on top of a minimal OS install. What would you consider the best minimal OS? I am already pretty familiar running Debian and Ubuntu.

I would prefer to stay with 64bit OS and software.

So I am thinking of Portainer and NextCloud as the two first containers. I might also set up a small webserver to use for development (I do websites).

I will not use Let’s Encrypt unless I have to. I am running this behind a pfSense router and want to let HAProxy+Let’s Encrypt on the router take care of it. I am already half way finished with that setup.

My use of NextCloud is pretty light. I will use it instead of Dropbox for clients, back up my mobile phone to it instead of Google, contacts and calendar. As there is no mailserver as part of NexCloud, it does not work as a complete Google replacement (I wish it would).

My internet is 450/225 on fiber.

Technically, I have a 500GB SSD in a USB enclosure that I want to use a boot drive. And I have a TB disk that I want to use for data. I will of course make sure it is backed up properly.

Any comments will be appreciated. Setting up a new systems is always interesting as it is a chance to try to get the best possible config to run for a long time.

I am NOT trying to set up everything under the sun just to tinker with it. Whatever I place on that system has to have a purpose.

The old one will probably end up connected to my TV as an internet browser with a wireless keyboard and mouse.

Either Raspbian still waiting for Bullseye after it was released by base Debian last week, Diet Pi, HomelabOS or Ubuntu Server will be fine. Ubuntu is not a bad choice now that they are promising 5 years of security updates. Bullseye stable for Debian was just released about a week ago and is the assumed default Debian base for NextcloudPi… though with Docker containers this point just doesn’t matter, cause it is a container. Nextcloud is also officially supported on arm64 docker if you prefer to skip ncp entirely for a basic, custom nextcloud install.

All of these are available with 64-bit stable software. Just took Raspberry Pi Foundation forever due to all their legacy devices in regards to marketing. :+1:

Dope. SSD will be an excellent choice now that current Pi firmware supports directly booting from SSD

Keep data on the SSD. Use the slower disk for backups, as data is what Nextcloud is run off of. Also, nextcloud is not an actual backup solution. So better to keep your ncp backups on the secondary disk. You can always mount your backup disk into Nextcloud using NFS or SMB external storage.

Join Telegram: Contact @nextcloudpi to discuss more.

Checkout Kodi, which is designed to run any old Pi device on a TV and syncs beautifully with NextcloudPi.

It is outside of ncp, but you could always run mailu docker containers. Honestly, I feel mail is too important to run on the same device as the Nextcloud device, so it might be worth joining a free hosted instance such a librehost who provides email.

1 Like

[quote=“just, post:2, topic:122539”]
Either Raspbian still waiting for Bullseye after it was released by base Debian last week, Diet Pi, HomelabOS or Ubuntu Server will be fine. Ubuntu is not a bad choice now that they are promising 5 years of security updates. Bullseye stable for Debian was just released about a week ago and is the assumed default Debian base for NextcloudPi… though with Docker containers this point just doesn’t matter, cause it is a container. Nextcloud is also officially supported on arm64 docker if you prefer to skip ncp entirely for a basic, custom nextcloud install.[/quote]

I will take a look at these. Thank you for taking the time to answer!

[quote=“just, post:2, topic:122539”]
Keep data on the SSD. Use the slower disk for backups, as data is what Nextcloud is run off of. Also, nextcloud is not an actual backup solution. So better to keep your ncp backups on the secondary disk. You can always mount your backup disk into Nextcloud using NFS or SMB external storage.[/quote]

I hear what you are saying, bu the speed difference will not be an issue for me. It is not a NAS. Both drives will easily outperform my internet speed :slight_smile: And I have quite a lot of data that will go on that 6TB drive, so the SSD will be for software and basic data. Not for the pictures, video etc. And I will of course back it up properly. I might even set it up to sync to a different continent as I heard you could sync instances of NextCloud across several locations.

That is very unfortunate. Here is how it COULD work A LOT better:

As Gmail, NextCloud should have POP3, so you could import mail from any account you have. What is the point of using NextCloud as an IMAP webmail client? Completely useless! ALL ISP’s that is worth its salt today offer a webmail client. What we need is to get the email off the other servers because the space there is limited. THEN you offer an IMAP server so people can use Thunderbird or the webmail client of NextCloud to read the mail that now sits in NextCloud.

Most people I know today has the mail accounts on their domains picked up by Gmail via POP3 so that they do not accumulate any email on their domain. That will eventually cost a lot of money.
To me, it is very strange that this point seems to totally bypass the people behind NexCloud. We need a real alternative to Google. No only Dropbox. Google includes email. Not only a mailreader.

Email is vital to any organization today. We need to move it off the mailserver of our ISP and keep it on our NextCloud. That’s how simple it really is :slight_smile:

Sorry. Not using Telegram. I am available on Signal :slight_smile:

Interesting day trying various solutions.

I wanted to try the 64bit Ubuntu server ARM image. And I used Balena Etcher to write it to the SSD. That did not work. I eventually went with Raspbian written to an SD card to just confirm it would actually boot.

After getting that up and running I was able to get VNC running and use it to copy the SD card to the SSD after updating the bootloader. And it finally worked.

But before totally giving up on Ubuntu, I tried one more time. This time using the Raspberry Pi Image Tool. And again - it worked!

So I now have a fresh Ubuntu server installed on my Rpi4 running from and SSD. Everything updated and upgraded.

I guess the next thing will be to install Docker?

One more thing: I have to set up the HD. Is there any problem for NCp to reach a HD from within a container?