Sanity check on nextcloud setup / installation plans and other questions

🚧 Installation
1

Hi everyone,

So maybe I’m completely in the wrong place to ask, and if that is the case, please direct me in the right direction.

In my “quest” to break free from proprietary and cloud based services I’m looking to move to Nextcloud to get away from MS365 (mostly used for storage). This will be the last hurdle to be free of non-foss or cloud based software.

Selfhosting seems to make sense and I’ve been doing some research and Nextcloud appears to be what I am after.

Now, to get to the meat of the question.

I’m thinking of running the following (basically old hardware I have left over after upgrading).

I5-7600
16GB ram
nvme bootdrive
Consumer grade motherboard
2x Ironwolf Pro in Raid 1 (could be 3 in raid 5 if that makes more sense).

I’d like to also run a openhab2 server, media server, pihole and my unify controller, I run these on a raspi now, and would like to remove that device if possible.

I’m thinking of running Ubuntu LTS (Server or non-server?). I really can’t be assed to run something arch based with all the headaches that will bring.

The server will be on a 1gbit fiber line without data caps. The server will probably not host more than 5 accounts for direct family members.

Now some questions.

  1. Does the hardware setup make sense?
  2. Should in run Nextcloud in a docker for security, or will for my use be a normal install be better?
  3. My most critical files will still be backed up encrypted to a backblaze storage. However I would like to have at least good enough reliability on my files. Is a raid 1 setup with enterprise grade drives OK, or should I go raid 5 with a third drive? I’m thinking ZFS, but would that bring more issues than it’s worth?
  4. As it stands it will be a softraid arrangement. Should I invest in a hardware controller? If so, what would be a good supported controller that doesn’t break the bank?
  5. Should I be going for apache, or an alternative solution, Im not suoer experienced running a webserver?
  6. How much of a headache am I getting myself into also wanting to run other servers (media, home)?

Hopefully I’m asking the right questions. I’d hate to invest a ton of time and money into something that will only cause a headache.

Thank you all for your consideration.

1 Like
2

If you’re looking for a self-hosted replacement for OneDrive, you’ve come to the right place.

This should be more than sufficient if it’s just for your personal use.

Ubuntu Server will be perfectly fine for Nextcloud.

I don’t know that there’s a major difference from a security standpoint, but I run it in Docker personally, and I wrote a guide for it if you’re interested.

I can’t speak to ZFS, but RAID-5 doesn’t offer more reliability than RAID-1. Both tolerate only one concurrent failure. RAID-5 will give you more usable storage at a sharp cost of write performance.

I personally use Apache, and that’s what the Nextcloud docs also recommend. Many people use Nginx.

It’s really not too bad, but understand that you will need a working knowledge of DNS and firewalls and a local DNS server if you want this (or any other self-hosting) to be a smooth process.

If you need a better firewall, have a look at pfSense.

1 Like