Current version of nextcloud on linux server.
I have read a lot about system requirements for the server but it all depends on many app factors etc.
I was wondering what might be the minimum system requirements for a VM nextcloud server for storing photos only.
I’ll have maybe 2-4 users using the android apps to auto upload their camera pictures similar to how mobile would work on android and onedrive.
Currently I have assigned various resources of the VM changing it from 1cpu/1GB and moving it up to 4CPU/8GB.
I didn’t really noticed any performance differences of the server at all.
I just don’t want to over use if I only need 1cpu/1GB or 2cpu/2GB etc.
Please advise.
Thanks
It’ll probably depend on the number of photos. Are we talking a few hundred? A few thousand? Hundreds of thousands? If you’re satisfied with 1CPU/1GB performance, you seem to have answered your own question 
Storage things only cost you harddisk.
The uploading process is takeing ram during upload. But when the files are uploaded and just stored on the server they are not hungry.
What you might need is depending on the ammount of users downloading and uploading the pics on your server at the same time. It’s natrual that you don’t see any performance change on your tests while you testing the system directly with just one device i guess.
I’d say in you case for about 4 users just give the machine 2 Cores and 2 ore 4 GB RAM.
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Thanks this is helpful.
4 users, but then the question is expansion.
How far can you go with something like this self hosted and how many users ?
At what point will users see the system halt or bog down ? 10 users ? more/less ?
thanks this does help and I’ll increase cores to 2/2gb and just monitor to see if it become overloaded
Many ways lead to rome:
First you can check in the system panel the amount of RAM thats currently in use. If this is increasing give the machine more.
You’d might try aswell the HPB for files offically intreduced by the nextcloud team. This is ment to give more efficency to file handeling on your server.
Since nextcloud scales pretty high the end of the line would be your budget and the room you can affort fore your hardware. If you have enough money and space you can even beat US hyperscalers.
Caching is always a good idea, just check the offical manual on this. In your case you definitly want to decrease the time needed to load files. You even can cache your storage on a deeper layer than just your nextcloud. For example: you can use an ssd drive to hold the newest or often used files for fast access and push the rest of your stuff to an HDD grave and provide this system as a virtual drive to your Nextcloud using it. You’d might look for Bcache and RAID. Depending on your needs take good care by choosing the right RAID Level.
If your server reaches the end of the line for the hardware you can put into it. You’d might concider setting up a system with a loudbalancer deviding the requests to your system to different instances of your Nextcloud on different servers.
Scaleing of a system is and was always an art and since. Just play a bit arround try different things out. In case of the nextcloud my experience arround 150 MB RAM per User arround 100 GB storage for each and round about 8 corse per 100 Users works pretty well for daily business.
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If you’re using a VM to which you can dynamically add or remove CPUs and RAM, then you just watch the load and see how to adjust.
Saying 4 users is great, but that doesn’t really give any indication of the amount of load to expect. 4 users who are professional photographers/videographers and use the service for sharing data with their clients would put a bigger load on the server than a 4 users who are kids just using it in the background to back up the pictures they take.
Bottom line is that system requirements are not a hard and fast set of rules, just a set of verrrrrrry broad guidelines for coming up with a starting point. You need to follow the load on YOUR installation and see if you need to make any adjustments.
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I didn’t think of that part. Yeah cause sharing stuff all over means they are like other users and you don’t know how many that might even be etc.
That is interesting so maybe I should be thinking of a few more resources at least a little since I do share things with others for public links sometimes.
Thanks.