So, this is a question that doesn’t really have a right answer, but something I’ve been trying to get my head around for a while.
For those that use NextCloud, how do you decide what data goes into NextCloud vs. what gets stored directly on the NAS (e.g., in SMB/NFS/iSCSI network shares)?
My understanding is that it’s intended to be a replacement for Dropbox/other cloud services and also provide a cloud-based Office suite, like Office 365.
However, I have to use Office 365 for work, and I’ve got roommates who depend on Dropbox (and also use it myself for collaborating with some volunteer organizations), so I’m not sure I could realistically allow NextCloud to take over my life … which seems like what it’s designed to do.
Maybe it’s an age thing or something else, but I’m also more comfortable with the idea of self-hosting a VPN and dialing back home to get access to file shares and self-hosted services in my LAN.
So, I guess what I’m interested in how people use it who are in a similar situation, where they can’t make it the center of their storage life.
I stopped running Nextcloud, but when I did run it, I mounted an NFS share to my Nextcloud VM and changed the data directory in Nextcloud to be that directory with the share mounted to it. That way anything stored on Nextcloud actually went into the NAS.
It all depends on your situation, use case and security tolerance. There isn’t really a big different if you use both options for file storage. Where nextcloud shines is when nextcloud is exposed to the internet you can share large files with whoever you want that you can’t simple email. You can have your calendar data private. With the right configuration you can work on word and excel documents from the web. Most of all, it can be a multi user application.
For me, nextcloud solves a privacy issue I have for other cloud solutions like 365 and Dropbox. I also don’t like google snooping on my calendar that many other people use to schedule whatever. Also there isn’t an easy way to backup photos and videos easily directly to an SMB share from an iPhone.
Sounds like in your situation that the VPN and SMB is all you need. I’m not sure what you mean by nextcloud taking over your life, but I have more requirements than just a simple file share.
Nextcloud is just a tool. It doesn’t have to take over your “storage life” and you can decide to only use it for file sharing if you want. The desktop syncronization app is pretty slick too. You could use Nextcloud exactly as you use Dropbox, right along side Dropbox if need be. Running in a docker image, Nextcloud is not super resource intensive. So pick and choose the the features you want to use and ignore the rest. I stopped unisng Nextcloud because I invested in a Synology NAS and I really like the Synology drive client and their solution to accessing your files from the web (direct connect). But if I ditch the Synology, for say TrueNAS, I could see running Nextcloud on top of TrueNAS to provide similar functionality. Nextcloud has a decent phone app too. If you are worried about security/privacy, run something like Tailscale. I have Tailscale on my pfSense firewall/router, and I advertise all of my services through it. It allows me to access files, etc. on my phone or laptop as if I was home. Its a pretty slick solution.
I’ve tried various solutions SharePoint, OnlyOffice, ownCloud … the problem I encountered was that the application needed maintenance and if something went wrong with the database backend then it’s a pain to deal with.
Now I keep my files from the last 25 years on a NAS and a second samba server with USB bays running in proxmox.
Additionally I run a mediawiki site which is a combination of text and files, in a vm which I can easily backup and restore.
I can dial home and get any files over openvpn running on pfsense so no issues.
The one thing that is a real pain, is if you use something like openmediavault you need to format the hard drives, when I’ve then needed to plug in the drives to a second machine they are unreadable.
Whatever you do have at least two copies of critical data.
Thanks for the perspectives, everyone. This is all very helpful.
I should specify that when I mentioned “taking over my storage life,” I was being somewhat tongue-in-cheek. All the tutorial videos and guides approach NextCloud as if it’s going to be your everything: file storage, productivity applications, etc.
if it were just me, I might actually try using it that way, but I’ve got roommates and family members I manage data for who use a mixture of iCloud, Dropbox, local storage, etc. The ones on iCloud store all their photos there, and they’ve been doing it that way for 10 years and it works fine for them and they know how to use it.
They’re not all going to convert to NextCloud–and more to the point, I don’t want them to. I don’t really want to be responsible for everyone else’s critical data when I’m still learning how my NAS works.
None of the guides I’d looked at explored the minimum use case (“here are some files that are accessible everywhere, and that’s it”), or mentioned that it can use external storage (e.g., TrueNAS datasets over the network).
If one’s big concern is file storage and syncing, how does NextCloud compare to running Syncthing on a TrueNAS server and having SyncThing clients on the necessary clients? (Assume I have a VPN and proper backups and all that set up and working).
Tom has a pretty good video on using syncthing and how the networking/security works. You can watch and learn and see if it lines up better than using nextcloud.
My primary use case is sharing files with my customers without requiring a Nextcloud account. All they need to do is click on a link that I send them in an email message. On the Nextcloud server I create a share and setup the permissions. If needed I can password protect access to the share, set an expiration date for access, set files as view only, and not allow download.
I use the following Nextcloud apps to replace Google functionality.
Nextcloud Files to store project documentation, business files, etc.
Nextcloud Photos store pictures & video from my Android phone automatically.
Nextcloud Talk for video conferencing.
Nextcloud Email to access all my email accounts from a single login.
Nextcloud Contacts for contact information.
Nextcloud Calendar to keep track of my schedule.
Nextcloud Deck for Kanban project management.
Since I host the Nextcloud server I control who has access to my data.
