Replacing "Managed NextCloud" by VPS

🗃️ Hosting providers
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On my way to digital sovereignty, I would like to replace Google services such as GDrive, Photos, GMail etc. with a NexcCloud hosted in the EU or Germany. To do this, I have booked a “Managed NextCloud” with IONOS. However, I realized that the Managed NextCloud can’t offer me what I need. The NC version is still 28.0.7 instead of 31.x.x. IONOS offers neither its own backup nor the backup app from NC. The Photos app “Memories” is not offered by IONOS in the App Store.

Now I’m thinking about replacing “Managed NextCloud” with a VPS server at IONOS.

Is this VPS from IONOS suitable for NC and if so, which variant would be suitable for private purposes? (1 vCore CPU with 1 GB Ram, 2 CPUs with 2 GB, 2 CPUs with 4 GB, 4 CPUs with 8 GB)

With which installation variant does NC come on the VPS, with Docker or with Server Archive?

2

Hi

For VPS it implies you have some administrative knowledge to maintain the underlying OS, and not only the NC by itself !
You need to find some more serious companies than IONOS that offers truly managed NC instances. I do it here in Switzerland for my customers and it works great (they have access at CODE editor for online editing, their NC is daily backuped in encrypted storage in a remote place) and it’s hosted on my servers that are in a DC.
For memories the main problem is ressources needed to use it all the more if you want to do objects/faces detection on large libraries.

Vincèn

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Just as vincen said, it is no replacement, because you need to do all the administration, and if you have no experience, I’d rather start with a local setup to play around (virtual machine, old computer, …) and expect things to break and not work.

They might have enterprise subscriptions with longer support cycles.

has no version in the app store for currently supported NC versions (community).

Regarding the hardware requirements, to test on a local setup is not bad there either because you have much more resources. Just for the recognize app, they recommend at least 4 GB of RAM. So you’ll start at least with the 8 GB RAM package.
And don’t start with long subscription times, if you see the performance is not suited or you are do not want to continue after some time.

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“digital sovereignty” can be the possibilty to use a Managed Nextcloud and have the option to migrade to another Managed Nextcloud, VPS, On-Prem, …

  • owner of subdomain cloud.server.tld
  • full backup of data
  • full backup of database
  • full backup of configuration

Compare e.g. IONOS with https://portknox.net. Can you really migrate from IONOS? Search Vendor Lock-in.

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None. A VPS usually comes with nothing but a basic Linux installation. From there, you’re responsible for setting everything up yourself.

Of course, this gives you the most flexibility as you can choose from all available installation types (manual via LAMP/LEMP stack, Snap, AIO, Docker microservices). However, as others have already mentioned, you need to understand how to administer and secure a Linux server, as well as familiarity with the relevant tools and technologies.

The easiest option, and the only officially supported one apart from a manual installation, is Nextcloud AIO. It includes everything you need to run Nextcloud with all the bells and whistles, like Office integration, Talk with High performance backend for video calls, Whiteboard etc… GitHub - nextcloud/all-in-one: 📦 The official Nextcloud installation method. Provides easy deployment and maintenance with most features included in this one Nextcloud instance.

Regarding IONOS VPSs, I noticed that they come with Plesk, which is a web-based management interface. This can make make managing a manual installation easier since many things on your system like the web server, PHP, database etc. can be managed via a web interface.

However, bear in mind that Plesk cannot automagically create a perfectly tuned Nextcloud environment for you, and you will still need at least a basic understanding of how the things you manage with it work. Also, many online tutorials and commands won’t work exactly as described because Plesk uses its own directory structure and configuration files for things like PHP, the web server etc, which means you need to adapt everything for Plesk.

Also, if you’re going to use AIO, which I would highly recommend, Plesk won’t be of much help, since AIO is essentially a self-contained appliance with its own management interface. That means you won’t be using Plesk for much, if anything at all.

Of course, even with AIO, there are still a few things you’ll need to manage directly on the Linux system itself, such as installing Docker, keeping system packages up to date, and securing SSH access. I’m not sure whether Plesk can handle those tasks, but either way, you should be able to manage things like that manually via the command line if you plan using a VPS, otherwise it might be better to stick with a fully managed Nextcloud hosting solution.

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Is it real IONOS Managed Nextcloud or IONOS Plesk/one click/… Nextcloud?

Managed Nextcloud Hosting | IONOS

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As far as I understand, Managed Nextcloud Hosting | IONOS is what @DigitalSovereign is currently using, and since that seems to come with some limitations, they’re now planning to switch to a VPS.

Not sure they offer that with their VPSs. The product page only mentions Plesk Web Host Edition, not sure if “one-click” installations for web apps like Nextcloud are part of this.

Either way, these “one-click” setups via web hosting panels like Plesk or cPanel are usually quite basic and not particularly well-optimized. And if you want to use additional features, especially those that require separate backend services, these panels likely won’t be of much help.

8

Currently I am using exactly this product you have linked to.

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I only chose Memories as the Photos app because there are no other options with a managed NextCloud (apart from “Photos”). By using a VPS would I be able to install other Photos apps such as “immich”.

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Many thanks for the numerous responses.

I am aware that I can manage everything myself on a VPS. That in particular gives me the opportunity to react flexibly to my requirements.

I have already taken up @tflidd’s suggestion to start on a local Linux box to test the installation and administration.

1 Like
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In case that was meant as a question: Yes, if your VPS has enough resources, Immich could be installed alongside Nextcloud on the same server. But as far as I know, it doesn’t offer any integrations with Nextcloud.

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I also think there is no Next cloud integration.

Immich Integration with Nextcloud

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I researched this myself some time back regarding de googling and digital sovereignty.
You do need to take into consideration security and maintenance responsibilities, how will you manage downtime (and if you manage the family nextcloud their downtime as well).
I would add Hetzner as a reliable provider of managed nextcloud instances.
They are the server admins and make sure you have a stable nextcloud instance and they manage the security and upgrades and you manage the inside of nextcloud including all the apps you want to install. You also get limited access to OCC to run admin maintenance and if or when something requires more attention you contact support.
I think it is good for production environments or when you want to ensure minimal guaranteed downtime and you don’t have a hands on expert always on call / site to manage the server/NC when things break down.

Also - you can easily spin up another server (you get a bare minimal ubuntu and have complete admin access to do what you want) to add connected services for collabora office etc. and it is still cheaper compared to the alternatives I see here in the other replies.
Hope it helps someone.

1 Like
14

I think this is the really interesting point: You must not use Nextcloud On-Prem. It must not be cheap. But you can change your Nextcloud hoster or change to On-Prem every day.

An independent Nextcloud consists of your own domain or subdomain (e.g. CNAME cloud.server.tld), the free Nextcloud software, the Nextcloud configuration and the Nextcloud database. This allows the Nextcloud to be relocated at any time to any place. Ask Microsoft whether this is also possible with Microsoft 365.

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Nextcloud On Prem is not a must at this point, just a point of data to consider in the overall balance of trade offs.
Not cheap? It’s both what you pay and what you get.
btw - the 4.4 euros/month for a managed NC with 1TB and 50 concurent connections is good pricing IMHO (hetzner).
Going on prem will be in the future as that is the direction of development of things. Was it realistic to run a HA cluster at your home lab 10 years ago?
I have a cluster running now on multiple end points. So it is a matter of time, and not a lot of it, thanks to AI programming, that I and others would move to an on prem NC. Even then, using cloud providers like Hetzner would be justified if and when it would be possible to use their NC as an off site HA / backup (or build a cluster at your family/friends place and hope it works when you need it).
MS ecosystem- is definitely something to run away from.