Questions regarding license + EOL with Hosting providers

Hello,

I think about using a managed Nextcloud Enterprise instance. Iā€™m new to Nextcloud in general. For this, I signed up with a hosting provider and checked the status.php file. This returns:

grafik

This leads me to multiple questions (donā€™t worry, I will ask my provider as well :wink: ):

  1. Shall the hosting provider set up a subscription key in the support tab of Nextcloud settings? What would be the benefits of maintaining this? The installed version is the Enterprise version so that looks fine to me.
  2. Whatā€™s the ā€œextendedSupportā€ flag? Does it matter in my use case if itā€™s false?
  3. Where do I find EOL information on NextCloud Enterprise version? Maintenance and Release Schedule Ā· nextcloud/server Wiki Ā· GitHub refers to the Community Edition it looks like.
  4. I read the ā€œAbout the Hosting providers categoryā€ post in this forum category which clearly states what we can expect from official hosting partners. In my case my provider is a Platinum NextCloud partner. Does anybody have experience on actually enforcing his or her hosting provider to fulfill standard duties when thereā€™s a lack, e. g. keeping NextCloud active in case itā€™s not given and they are official Partners? Is it just theory or does the partner status indeed take this serious?

Thank you for your help!

Best Regards,

1 Like

hi @warg welcome to the forum :handshake:

all this questions are more or less wrong in this forum as majority of the users are not Nextcloud employeesā€¦ I think it better you ask you hosting provider. I donā€™t think you can judge seriously about your provider solely from the instance version running on the systemā€¦ NC24 is definitely quite old now and doesnā€™t look like good supply chain handling but there might be reasons to stay on this version. I think you better look on your contract - is there any promise to keep the software up to date? do they promise to upgrade after NC ships a release? this would be more relevant for you.

Hi @wwe! Thanks for your warm welcome and reply.

Iā€™m aware that this is mainly a customer/user forum. I thought that some of the questions might be answered by experience from other users, e. g. I miss some documentation that could answer the technical meaning of those flags or point out that their provider does this in a different way.

I think NC24 is OK as long as itā€™s the Enterprise edition as it has an extended End of Life (EOL). The only thing I would criticize is that the minor version seems to be from 11/2022 and thus being some months behind. Updating minor versions shouldnā€™t be a real risk, especially if itā€™s not the latest one.

I agree this could be OK to run a version with active enterprise support agreement little longer as community version. But my personal expectation from a good provider would be at least current-1 major version scheduleā€¦ and definitely not a good sign when they donā€™t even run the latest current minor version.

1 Like

Yes that is the point you could ask your provider. The extended support would only apply for version that donā€™t have public support any more. However, Iā€™d ask then as well, why they do not use a more current version (which often comes with more features, has better performance). So perhaps ask what plans they have to upgrade to NC 25.

@Daphne or @jospoortvliet can perhaps give more details about the obligations being a platinum NC partner. A quick look on the website didnā€™t really explain the difference of partner levels.

3 Likes

the best thing would be indeed be to reach out to the customer support of your provider. Iā€™m not aware of the requirements and labelling

I think we can see it as solved: I tried the provider whoā€™s a platinum provider and it was one of the worst solutions I experienced and really bad customer support. Seems platinum level means nothing. The Nextcloud instance broke the next day (day 2) and support wasnā€™t able to deal with it in 24h nor was their hotline any useful. This equals to the experiences of other users in this forum with them.

1 Like

By my own experience, avoid cheap Nextcloud hosting. Yeah, itā€™s cheap in cost, but also in everything else. Weā€™ve switched to a more expensive host, but a dedicated instance (not shared) and zero downtimes or performance issues in 2 years now. My 2cents :wink:

Hi,

I want to link to this post where I try to give some explaination why sometimes you reach an EOL message at our environment:

I canā€™t speak for other providers, but upgrading on a hosting environment isnā€™t as straightforward as you might think.

Here is some more insight on what we encounter keeping our deployments current:
https://thegood.cloud/en/articles#introducing-the-good-journal

Itā€™s incumbent upon the provider to stay, at the very least, on a supported version of the software. Bare minimum, no excuses. You take on that responsibility by providing the service, and itā€™s up to you to make it happen if you donā€™t want a reception like what Iā€™m seeing here.

2 Likes

It doesnā€™t seem to be overly complicated compared to community users. Some run similar restricted permissions. At least, you have the enterprise support at hand in case of problems, so for the versions you are using in combination with your environment, the issues should be quickly fixed.

1 Like