Nextcloud setup for home advice

ℹ️ Support
#1

Hey guys,

I would like to setup my private Nextcloud server. I thought of buying a Rasperry PI or Rock64 and use NAS Disk to connect NextCloud and have an another disk for a backup of data. So, 2 Hard drives.

my concerns are: Can I use Openmediavault and use NAS enabled HDD as storage for Nextcloud (seems complex process) and another disk for the backup? or should I install the nextcloud directly on the PI/rockpro? or to use nextcloud-on-nsynology-nas?

How is the scalability and efficiency factor on the both methods? and ofcourse, I would like to use it outside my LAN and sync data from both laptop and mobiles.

I would like to share this sever with one more user. Is it possible to share the storage space and maybe in furture, If i would like to expand the disk storage or connecting one more HDD? Is it possible to migrate all the data into one HDD? .

In future, I would like to have my hosting to host website since I will buy domain for nextcloud outside access. In this case, where should I have my files for hosting a website. On the same HDD or on different HDD? Is it possible to allocate a space (Like 50GB) seperate from a HDD in a HDD where nextcloud uses as an external HDD for storage?

Thanks for the support

#2

Hi Siva,

Here, I am running Nextcloud as a docker container in my ESXi server and its data are saved in an NFS share from my FreeNAS server. So pretty similar to running Nextcloud externally on a RaspPI and using a Synology FreeNAS backend.

You can sure do it. Only ask yourself if that is what will answer your need.

Will you do and keep your backups onsite ? Then a single fire or physical threat will destroy everything.

How and how often will you try to restore your backups ? A backup that has never been restored must be considered as non-functional.

So Yes you can build such a home and private cloud. Just do not fool yourself about how resilient and available it will be when compared to a professional cloud.

Here, I have 3 FreeNAS servers instead of 1. One of them is at a remote place over 400 Km away. I also do a restore at least once a year to be sure everything works as expected.

So sure you can build a private cloud. Just be aware of its strength and weakness before putting too much stuff and trust in it.

#3

If you’re interested in a Docker setup, I wrote a guide on how to set it up in Ubuntu.

It will be functional, but bear in mind 1.) performance will match what you put it, 2.) some addons (e.g. Collabora) will not run on ARM.

Nextcloud requires a single mount point for its data folder. Beyond that, how you arrange your drives (RAID, etc.) is a lower level system function not visible to Nextcloud.

You can host another website virtual host on the same server, but consider carefully how much load you want to put on a $35 board.

#5

Thanks for your response. I am considering to connect from outside via VPN(openvpn or wireguard). Rasperry PI 4 (4 GB Ram), 64 GB /128 GB Micro SD card and 4TB NAS Storage HDD (external storage data mount for nextcloud). On top of this, would like to add pihole.

Is it okay to proceed with this setup? any idea about the efficiency? Can Pi withstand with this requirements or Do I need to have a more processing power setup instead of PI?

I see freenas requirement is above 8gb ram. so not sure if it could be used along with pi.

regarding the configuration, needs to set in router: I don’t have all these setup in my vodofone router (DNS config) But previously, I have bridged with my another TP_Link router as wlan repeater. If I do this port forwarding and other router confgurations through the (TP_link) router. Won’t there be any problem?

#6

Why not direct HTTPS (Browser and WebDAV) with DynDNS and port-forwarding? Do you not want to use nextcloud on your mobile device?

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#7

If I generate a ovpn(openvpn) file and use that file in my mobile through any opevpn client. won’t I still able to access it?

Found this nice article: https://medium.com/@rohit_kapur/how-im-slowly-moving-off-the-cloud-with-nextcloud-460118a7723d - Only thing is I would like to replace in this setup by using pihole instead of dnsmasq.

#8

Yes you can use perhaps a vpn. But then you can not share files to other people.

What a pity. Nextcloud is a file sharing plattform. :wink:

Also you can not use a browser or an app direct.

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#9

Oh yeah. Thanks for bringing this, I didn’t think in that prespective. I agree. This is the drawback. Is there any other way to circumvent this along by using vpn. ofcourse, i dont want to share my openvpn config file to everyone whenever I like to share the file via nextcloud.

#10

For accessing nextcloud from the internet you need:

  • DynDNS-service if your internet provider change your ip address
  • a port-forwarding on your local router (port 80 and 443) to your Pi / Rock64 / nextcloud.
  • a lets encrypt certificate for your DynDNS-Name oder own name (CNAME to dyndns name).

If you use the project NextcloudPi ( https://ownyourbits.com/nextcloudpi/ ) you get perhaps all for your Pi or Rock64 in one image.

https://ownyourbits.com/nextcloudpi/#supported_systems

For testing you can use very old hardware (+10 years) with e.g. Debian Buster.
You can install the NextcloudPi-Image or install on your own.

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#11

You can also read an installation-guide for normal pcs in the intranet. Works for me.

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#12

ja. Thanks. This is perfekt. Thanks for your tips.

NextcloudPi looks cool.

One more question: let’s say I have my 2TB NAS storage HDD , I want to use 1.8TB for Nextcloud and 20Gb for hosting my own website or something. Is it possible (Disk partition and connect 80% of HDD to nextcloudpi) and does the PI able to process this computational power.

is it safe from seeing from a security and privacy perspective by having both on the same HDD or should I just use another 500GB HDD for this?

What are your thoughts?
Thanks

#13

This is a pretty black and white question; either you require a VPN to access your system, or you don’t. This is really up to you. The system is designed for use without a VPN.

You can do some additional hardening on your web server and firewall to substantially increase security. For example, on my home instance, I require SNI so that random web scans of my IP address don’t land on the Nextcloud login page. Instead my default vhost loads a bogus self-signed certificate (to hide the real domain name) and then redirects them to Bing.

I also block non-ARIN IPs from accessing it at all. That alone drastically reduces the number of random people scanning it, and therefore the number of potential hacking attempts.

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#14

Cool. This sounds really cool. Is there a documentation on how you did this or something I could use it as a referance.

#15

In my guide I linked above I have an example Apache site config for this, although I think I had the default system cert (which contains the hostname). You can create another one with OpenSSL, and there are many guides online about generating a self-signed certificate.

For the non-ARIN address blocking, I did that in my pfSense firewall based on publicly available info from IANA.

https://www.iana.org/assignments/ipv4-address-space/ipv4-address-space.xhtml

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#16

Thank for so much for the info. I like the docker container as well. I am in a dilemma of choosing between pi4 or NAS.

Is it possible to share the nextcloud instance outside the network with dynamic dns if I configure the setup in NAS. I read somewhere when you use NAS as external storage you ll miss out some features such as sharing a file and webdav option. Could you give me some insights about it ? I thought of doing the setup in pi4 with external hdd . Now In a dilemma of choosing of NAS where I could deploy several vm and use it one for NC, one for hosting a website and maybe one for pihole. I would like to expose the NC and Website outside LAN. Would this be a good option in terms of security prespective? also have one drive of NAS for a Backup.

#17

Not accurate as far as I know. You can share from external storage.

Before you drop a bunch of cash on a NAS, consider getting a real server. You can get a good used Dell PowerEdge that’ll run VMware ESXi for not much more.

#18

I see here when you use docker container, you can’t access few apps. Is it true or did I hold on to a old guide or something? https://docs.nextcloudpi.com/en/how-to-get-started-with-ncp-docker/

#19

That’s NextCloudPi. Not entirely the same thing. I think what you probably saw was some things like Collabora won’t work on an ARM CPU.

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#20

So If I use nextcloudpi docker container, then I probably have to miss few features.

#21

I have not used NextCloudPi but my understanding is the limitation is due to the ARM CPU on those little boards. NCP is also available for Docker on other systems and as far as I know there is no app limitation then.