654: Data Storage in 2022

Nice - can you setup NextCloud on a local Mac rather than a cloud storage service provider?

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I havenā€™t set it up on macOS (I have on Raspberry Pi, Synology NAS, and currently, my Linux Kubuntu box), but it looks like theyā€™ve made Docker images and virtual machines available.
Personally, I would try a Docker image first, as I think the networking is a bit easier.

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Thanks for the info.

Nextcloud itself is a free application that you can self-host, which is what I do on an Linux server running nginx.

There are Nextcloud hosting services out there as well. Note that Nextcloud is like a suite of applications, with documents sync and webdav just being 2 of the ones that I used.

I see, now I understand. I probably not technical enough to do my own hosting. Will look around, thanks

Just to add to this. My implementation is a bit of overkill. At home, I run a virtualization server called ā€œProxmomā€ which manages virtual machines and linux containers(similar but different from docker containers) to self-host server applications.

Depending on the the application , Iā€™ll create a virtual machine ( the most resource intensive) or a linux container(much less resource intensive ) to run the server.

I donā€™t run as many docker containers as I used to , linux containers have mostly replaced them, but if I need to , I can run a docker container inside of a linux container. I generally only do that when Iā€™m being lazy. :slight_smile:

You can run Nextcloud in any linux environment. Hosting service(let them do it!), cloud computing servers(aws, azure, gcp ), virtual private server(digitalocean, vultr ), or home server.

A basic setup is

  • Web server, such as Apache or Nginx , for the web interface.
  • A data storage location. Very light install would be a sqlite db file. You can use postgres database server as well.
  • The Nextcloud server which is the ā€œbusiness logicā€ part of the application.
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For some definition of "basicā€™. :joy:

I run my own web server on Digital Ocean. I do OK, but it required a lot of effort to get it up and running. I also tried out NextCloud and even getting past the quirky nature of the solution, I found it difficult to get working and very unreliable. This was probably five years ago now, but I tried it and a competitor product and neither filled me with any confidence that I could keep a working service going.

It is not for the faint of heart.

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The most scalable and agile solution for this would probably be a Terraform/CDK based lambda/SQS/S3 solution that could just be set up in a new AWS project for each user.
However, now weā€™re beyond ā€œhosting my own serverā€ and over to ā€œmanaging a development project to recreate Dropbox just for meā€

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It is all relative! Iā€™ve recently been looking at personal finance apps, and some people suggest ā€œjustā€ creating a set of Excel spreadsheets to ingest data and make all of the calculations.

My reaction ā€œIā€™ll get on that after Iā€™m done organizing the next SpaceX launch.ā€

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Exactly. Youā€™ll know if itā€™s something you can do easily. If you donā€™t know whatā€™s involved, it wonā€™t be easy.

Compared to ā€œinstall DropBoxā€, setting up NextCloud is ā€¦ about as basic as organising a SpaceX launch.

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