Preconfigure private external storage for users

I’ve been very slowly setting up a new Nextcloud server for out little group, this is my second try, the first time used Snapcraft but it feels like it’s missing a dependency or two. I set up the server with a small 20-30GB disk just enough to hold up the system and nothing more thinking I could offload files and database to other systems.

Right now outside of Nextcloud, their files live on network servers on which upon logging in the /home folder changes accordingly so it’s always the user’s and I’ve set it up on a GPO in Active Directory as a mapped drive with the address \\server\home because the server end handles the correct addressing of the resources; macOS is not as elegant as in Windows --that’s a first-- but it can also be done using Profile Manager. I want to do the same for them in Nextcloud but reading the help files I see that configuring external storage there is a group thing and not individual–I was just going to try it anyway mounting an SMB share without specifying Remote Subfolder but after clicking by mistake somewhere else; the second time I was filling in the details I stopped because I remembered Nextcloud has Active Directory superpowers and I’m not sure how much damage I could do by finishing it. Weighting my options, it dawned on my I could as well just grow the VM’s disk or add more disks to it but their existing files still wouldn’t be retrieved and they wouldn’t know how to do it themselves even if I wrote up a tutorial that automatically showed up at login.

I’m their go-to guy for these things and I barely know how to email myself. :pensive:

Anyway, here’s when I come to you. Would this work? Setting an SMB share or maybe WebDAV, the backend also supports that among AFP, NFS, FTP, SFTP, FTPS and iSCSI (just checked); [scheme]://[server]/home I think only works with SMB/AFP/WebDAV though. I chose SMB because it’s already being used for Windows and macOS and to avoid cross-protocol file locking.

If I set like this, would Nextcloud be OK when it notices /home is not the same for each account? Would it even notice?

Last month I lost 3-4TB of data in VMs thanks to bad Microsoft software–a CA included, nothing personal thankfully; I just finished recreating everything and I feel super paranoid it’s going to happen again so I’m being super cautious, these are personal files after all.

Anyway, thanks a million for your advice/guidance, I’ll be stalking my inbox all week in case I get responses. :man_technologist:t3: :rescue_worker_helmet: