Hey guys I wanted to make sure I’m not overlooking someway of using Nextcloud to fit my needs.
Use case: hosting and sharing large files off of an unraid server with a small group of people running windows machines (<5). I do not want to sync anything, purely a push/pull on command - glorified ftp…so yes nextcloud was overkill to begin with given its capabilities.
As of right now I have nextcloud up and running and can transfer large files (20+GB) through the web gui. I dislike having to use the web gui but the deal breaker appears to be speeds.
LAN speeds fluctuate all over the place but never exceed 20 MB/s. Speeds should be sufficient to saturate local gigabit.
WAN speeds are SLOW. 100-500 kB/s reported (I have 50 mb/s up).
File chunking recombining is slow and apparently processor intensive? These large files take a while to recombine and are basically maxing out a quad core processor. (2500K, not cutting edge but I thought should be sufficient…)
I have tried webdav as I heard that was faster, but as mentioned clients are on windows so 4GB limit on files is a deal breaker (not nextcloud fault but deal breaker none the less).
So my real question is what am I missing? Should my nextcloud be faster on lan/wan? I haven’t played with disabling file chunking (think you can), would that really improve that much? Or did I try and use the wrong tool for the job? Thanks guys!
What exactly are you referring to? There are many webdav clients, so the only problem would be limits of the file system you are using…
The speed will be a limit for any solution you use. If you look at syncthing, it can perhaps better resume up- and downloads and use the bandwidth more efficiently. Not sure what you want to do, if it needs to be integrated in other programs or needs a nice interface. Even SFTP might be a solution (perhaps in combination with rsync.
Actually, I wouldn’t recommend Nextcloud for such big files. Better use SMB, NFS, SFTP, FTPS or e.g. rsync via SSH for this. Syncthing or many others are option, too.
@tflidd. I mapped a network drive to https://example.com/nextcloud/remote.php/dav/files/USERNAME/ as per the nextcloud documentation for webdav in windows. As I understand it there is no work around for transferring files over 4GB with windows. Nothing needs to be integrated into another program for my needs. SFTP is on the list to investigate, but as I already had nextcloud up and running wanted to make sure I wasn’t missing something. Thanks!
Thanks @szaimen that’s what I was thinking but wanted to confirm. Seafile is on the list to look at closer too. My understanding is SMB is insecure so SFTP would be the way to go? I could be wrong though, learning as I go. Thanks for the help.
You can use WinSCP or Cyberduck to transfer independently from Windows (this mapping directly in Windows is a bit buggy). For a virtual drive there are new features hopefully soon in the client, and there are third party that support it (unfortunately paid ones).
Nextcloud is nice, if you want to provide download links, share or edit files together. If you don’t need this, I think syncthing even doesn’t need a server, git-annex, … Is there a risk that files are modified at the same time by users? So then how do these solution handle conflicts. Depending on the file type, delta-sync could be a killer feature (only transfer changed part of a file).
@tflidd thank you. I am trying cyberduck right now. Uploads are consistently 3x what it was in web gui (~60MB/s) on the LAN. I will see how it fares for remote users.
edit: Something with the upload must be failing. It is just looping through transfers…it gets to 100% then starts over…ah yea after maybe 4 times the transfer just failed. I think SFTP might be more suited to my limited needs. Thanks.
Yes, SMB is only useful inside your LAN.
If you need sharing permissions, etc. Seafile could be an option but has other disadvantages in comparison to Nextcloud.
If you only need to access files from elsewhere and don’t need functions Nextcloud or Seafile provide, then using e.g. Syncthing or SFTP should be better
