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 haven’t set it up on macOS (I have on Raspberry Pi, Synology NAS, and currently, my Linux Kubuntu box), but it looks like they’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 , I’ll create a virtual machine ( the most resource intensive) or a linux container(much less resource intensive ) to run the server.

I don’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 I’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 "basic’. :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 we’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! I’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€œI’ll get on that after I’m done organizing the next SpaceX launch.ā€

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Exactly. You’ll know if it’s something you can do easily. If you don’t know what’s involved, it won’t be easy.

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

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