What modern hardware do you recommend for NextcloudPi?

NextcloudPi Documentation
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Got specific hardware you recommend for new users? List it here.

You can also see this class thread going since 2016 titled Best cheap hardware to run Nextcloud on.

The rules

  • May be 32-bit or 64-bit architecture. This means arm64, x86-64, armhf, x86.
  • At least 4gb of ram recommended.
    • Optional, but Nextcloud Office will require a couple GB’s of ram by itself.
  • Gigabit ethernet.
    • Too common a standard to not embrace.
    • Speeds will always be contingent on your ISP and local network.
  • At least USB 3.0 or SATA or NVME or PCI-e
    • USB 2.0 and MicroSD are too slow at 10 - 30mb/s.
    • eMMC is fine around 125mb/s, but limited capacity
      .
  • Please include a link and cost.

Devices or expansion accessories? Edit the post and list them below. :smile_cat:

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My start was an old used laptop.
That’s not really a device but I recommend to use a used device which you anyway have around or from a local/online store for used devices.

Price tag is something around 80 -150$ + drives (+ more ram).

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full ack. old PC hardware often performs better than new low-level devices…

My 5y old core i3 Gen5 desktop runs 2 Nextcloud instances for the family and little more…

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The electricity consumption per year would also be interesting. I think in Germany it is not worthwhile for most private users to operate a 24/7-Nextcloud at home. Especially if the system used is not being utilized by Nextcloud or other services.

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Why are the rules what they are?

I run an instance on a Nanopi Neo 2 with 512 MB of RAM just fine.

Such a small SBC is also not very power-hungry…

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That is great it works for you, but we will not recommend anyone run Nextcloud on even 1gb of ram or MicroSD or USB 2.0 or 32-bit devices any longer. The times are a changing.

edit: Updated rules above. Thanks for the feedback.

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Hello,

Here are my personal views for NextCloud Hardware Choice.

Concurrent & Simultaneous Active Users - CPU

Nextcloud would run just fine on lowest of the hardware. Even which are decade or more old. Front end user won’t notice anything.

However things quickly spiral out of control when there any multiple active users uploading / downloading or using it simultaneously

Here is an example, 15 users out of which 8-10 are active & transferring large & number files together.

Core i7 4790 is pushed pretty hard.

However, if there are no such concurrent load at once or even if there are, number of files and volume of total transfer is low, this same CPU is easily handling double or triple the users count.

So plan accordingly. How much load do you expect. Make your CPU choice accordingly.

Module & Apps - RAM

NextCloud itself isn’t that RAM hungry. The software itself is happy to operate with even paltry 1GB RAM under Ubuntu 22 (Snap Version).

However, nextcloud has so many modules and 3rd party apps. More Apps & Moules (roles) you plan on using, along with that user count (as discussed above), your RAM requirement will increase.

So once again, look back at your plan. How do you plan to use NextCloud. What kind of role you want it to handle and with what kind of extra apps?

Network speed vs Storage Speed

Its the network which becomes bottleneck. Not your relatively slower speed Hard Disk. You don’t necessarily need costly NVMe or even SSD.

Yes sure, SSD will help with your Boot time but servers rarely reboot. Once up, the target for any admin is to keep it up n running non stop. That is what uptime is all about.

Your typical HDD file transfer speed is 10 times faster than your standard 1Gbps network.

In case your user count and volume of data is high, then before adding SSD, plan to upgrade your network to 10Gbps.

Backup Server needs backup too

Cheap out on everything but always try to use Raid Arrey with new Storage Disks. You may be backing up to this backup server of yours but this server itself can fail and data as you know, is priceless.

So for storage, it must be always in pair (at-least)

Getting Started

There are three aspects here,

  1. Home users
  2. Small or Medium Business
  3. Large Business

If you are a large business then it’s better to leave this thing on the expert and avoid DIY stuff. Contact NextCloud Team for their custom support plans to get things done for you.

If you are a small or medium business, first thing to ask yourself → Why not Cloud VPS Providers? Renting this virtual hardware out of cloud is cheap to start with and gives you the ability to increase or decrease with a simple mouse click.

But if you are willing to host it yourself and at location, then plan it well before proceeding with hardware choice. Adding more RAM or faster storage can be an easy plug n play job but CPU replacement is costly and may require the whole system to be changed so be generous with your CPU selection. Select one with enough headroom for growth.

And as for a home user, I started my nextcloud self-hosting on an Intel Pentium Quad Core (N3530) based Laptop. For single user load its plenty. For a full family, any generation of Core i3 or above is sufficient. Here, more than speed, power consumption is the challenge since most of the time, your server will just seat idle, doing nothing but burning that electricity !!

So for home users, use any hardware that is available for you. If you have the luxury to choose from many, select the one with lowest power consumption!! You can always migrate to better hardware in case the user count increases, and load becomes too high for that present hardware to handle.

Thanks.

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Hi all,

Added:

@just feel free to edit if necessaray

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Just added this for the Pi 4. I use this myself. I have one internal HDD with the NextcloudPi image flashed along with data, and the other is for incremental backups. It has a built-in LCD display that I can quick-glance at the disk, RAM and CPU usages.

Added: