DeckPackerWhat do you think is the best (and cheapest) way to host a new nextcloud instance and website for my local scouts organisation?
hendrikGiven someone already pays for electricity and internet at the location, I'd say the cheapest option would be to ask all the members if someone has an old laptop to donate, maybe even with a broken display or whatever, main thing is it still somehow runs. Rip out the battery, Install Linux, Nextcloud (maybe Yunohost), and put it somewhere without public access.
My smaller VPS costs somewhere around 70€ a year, guess that could be worth it as well as long as it contributes something meaningful.
And be prepared to be disappointed, 99% of my scout group never used the selfhosted services I tried. I guess that's somehow okay. They were focused on the real life activities and no one had any interest to do office work or remember logins... Was always the same 2 people who did paperwork and they didn't need a cloud, so I scrapped it. Your story could be different, I'm not saying it needs to turn out that way.
Yeah, I totally get what you mean, I am kind of expecting that aswell, but at least I know, that other scouts groups in the area already have a nextcloud and it is actively beeing used, so I have some hopes in that regard. But yeah, getting them to use something like Matrix is probably pretty unrealistic.
How is the other group doing it? Could you leverage any of what they’re using?
Since it’s a public instance you’d want to be sure to keep it pretty up-to-date with new system patches and the latest stable versions of Nextcloud. If you’re comfortable with automating updates with ansible, k8s, docker-compose, etc. then it’s not a big deal. If you’re ssh’ing to a server to manually update things then it’s going to be a lot of overhead and likely forgotten.
Old hardware may also bring its own issues and you’ll need backups especially since old hardware (especially consumer-grade stuff) can fail very unexpectedly. And providing support for users is a whole… other thing…
I like the idea of starting with the “old laptop in a basement” approach as a way to get things going to see if the service provides benefit then look to migrate to a more stable platform in the future.
Yeah, I guess the plan would be (if we decide to use an old labtop) to have a similar backup system to my home server, so one daily incremental backup with something like borgbackup to a newly bought external hard drive and automated updates using watchtower (I heard major nextcloud upgrades can be tricky though, so I an not shure if it would be a good idea to automate those).
I guess it would still suck if the laptop unexpectedly failed and we would have to scramble to find new hardware though, how long would you expect an old laptop to last as a server?
Could last years? Or months? Depends on a lot of factors. Fans may not like running 24x7, memory could fail, etc.
Just be prepared for what you would do if it does.
Good luck, though. I believe first-hand experience with living a self-determined life - including online services - aligns nicely with scout ideals. And trying to convey the media-literacy that allows people to make informed choices.
And I can see some benefits with having documents available to everyone, templates and collaborate on the paperwork...
Glad to hear other groups in the area have success with Nextcloud... Another idea would be to somehow unite and share the hosting bill for a slightly bigger Nextcloud... But I still think my old laptop idea might be promising... depending on the network situation in the building and whether you can make port forwards and all the things that need to be done.
Possibly linuxCould you pay them to host it for you?
The “old laptop” method is only feasible when it’s a personal service. You don’t want people (non-techie adults in leadership positions, especially) expecting AWS/MS/Google level of availability only for them to find out that a busted laptop (using “average people” terms) is the only thing that’s keeping their data in place. It’s not a good solution for a non-familial organization.
Idk. Really depends on what you put there. And Nextcloud does file sync. Even if the server coughs up and becomes unavailable, you'd still have your directories and calendar on your devices. And creativity and problem-solving are core scout skills, so I guess bulding that thing for no money would be an interesting exercise in that. Though you're right. At some point you'll have to think about maintainability and reliability. I guess that wouldn't stop me from starting the project, but everyone has to decide for themselves.
Having been involved with many youth groups as a kid, including BSA, a not-insignificant amount of the leaders were - for lack of better word - idiots.
I don't think the BSA compare to the major German scouting associations. Different organization structure and substantially different ideology. But I suppose idiots are everywhere, at least that's my general life experience 😅
u_tamtamDon’t rip out the battery, that’s free UPS!
Yes, but there's 2 sides to that story. It's a free UPS and that's really nice. But then I've seen old batteries degrade and swell. People call it the spicy pillow syndrome. And with two of my older devices, batteries got recalled by the manufacturer. So I'd advise against running these things 24/7 unattended. Either know what you're doing or rip it out before it burns down the building. As a minimum that includes a location made of concrete or bricks and mortar and no burnable stuff in the vicinity. And regular checks on the state of the battery.
I mean, a mechanical timer costs, like, 3 bucks in any currency and lets you set charge and discharge cycles. Add 10 bucks and you have one that you can pilot via REST API.
I believe cycling and constantly discharging and charging a battery is even worse than letting the built-in charge controller do its job and keep the charge. I'm not an expert on battery chemistry, though. All I can say Thinkpads and other laptops have configurable thresholds for quite some time now. And despite me using that for the last 2 laptops, the batteries still go bad eventually. It's supposed to help, and batteries got better, but it's still a thing to factor in.
It’s best to keep it around 50℅ and let it charge / discharge about 5%, and then charge again. See the research links on charge.org (note the bias: his business sells a dongle, but some computers like think pads come with this functionality built in.)
Never heard of that, but I think the risk of a fire outweighs a “free” UPS. Good to know.
the_weezLook into digital ocean. They have pretty cheap hosting, like $6 a month last time I checked. You used to be able to get a month for free too. If it looks like a good option I can probably rustle you up a referral code.
I think that is for a shared CPU not a dedicated CPU. Nextcloud can be resource intensive in some cases so you probably do not want to run it on a shared plan.
I understand what you’re saying, but I think the user counts and usages would matter big time. I used to run it on the smallest plan DO offered, but I haven’t in a few years now. No idea if the usage requirements have grown over time, and that was just for 2 users.
I know a lot of people run it on a NAS in a VM or container, that’s not exactly a dedicated machine either.
Just a general warning:
It is one thing to provide something for family. It is another thing to be a person in authority providing one for an org. And kids are horrible and basically all have cameras everywhere they go. They WILL do something horrible and, depending on what that something is, you might now be liable for a lot of stuff you don’t want to be.
You don’t want that smoke. They can use google drive.
Asking for a discount is a great idea. Some companies do this. And in rare occurences the boss is an old boy scout themselves and they'll give you a 100% discount on some smaller favours...
Do you think “alright kids, meeting is officially over. Go home or get call your parents. If anyone wants to stay we will be hanging out and teaching server stuff at ____ ‘s house for an hour or two.” Gets around this?
Homie? I want you to know that while I am going to be inflammatory, I am not insulting you. In a slightly sane world, that should be fine.
NEVER work with children. “Hey kids. You can go home or you can stay with me and a few others and learn how to use a computer!”. At best you are setting yourself up for some awkward phone calls when Little Jimmy gets caught looking at something his parents don’t approve of.
If you are a close family friend and the parents understand what you are going to be teaching their kid (and obviously want you to teach it), go for it. If you are just watching them while they eat orange slices? Don’t fucking go anywhere near that. Let the teachers who actually train in how to handle these situations do it.
And the other aspect: Kids (and most adults) are not rational or intelligent. They aren’t going to take “Hey, if Susie sends you nudes don’t put them on this server because it will get me sent to prison as a diddler” as education on why they should not fucking do that.
If you ever want to get scared straight as it were? Take a teacher out for drinks (and you better pay for them!). You’ll hear LOTS of horror stories and get even a glimpse into the kind of hell they have to put up with.
My mom was a 6th grade teacher for 20 years. She always said that the worst part of the job was not the kids, but dealing with parents.
She recently pivoted to admin work. I don’t blame her one bit.
I‘d probably go with a VPS. It probably won‘t cost more than 10$/month, maybe even less, depending on how much heavy usage your Nextcloud instance requires. And you won‘t have to worry about keeping your hardware and network running, which pretty much always takes up more time than expected.
Some web hosters (I‘ve had very good experiences with Hetzner) charge an hourly rate and allow you to preconfigure VPSes with software like Nextcloud. So unless you have specific needs, you could just spin up an instance, check if it suits your needs and, if not, only pay a few cents.
I wouldn’t, unless you’ve been specifically asked by the organization to do so and given the proper authorization, legal counseling, etc, etc. Don’t go looking for solutions to problems that don’t exist in organizations where you have no say in leadership.
Your heart is in the right place, but I’m with @[email protected] here.
piezoelectronHey, what’s your budget? You could go far with a second-hand NUC (next unit of computing), I’m sure you can get one for under $100 and you could do more than just nextcloud with it (peertube, VPN, chat etc).
I personally think this is a better idea than an old laptop. Easier to work on if the fan or SSD ever dies, and the cooling is a little better than any cheaper laptops I have worked on.
It also wouldn’t need to be a NUC, basically every PC company makes a SFF or 1L sized computer, I’m partial to the Lenovo but the Dell’s are pretty nice too. I have about 8 Lenovo that are used as mini servers between home and work, on 24/7
Just a word of warning
Nextcloud is very finicky and can be prone to breakage. That’s not the say don’t use it but be realistic about the amount of work needed to maintain it.
Honestly I would just go for gsuite or office365 simply because they are less likely to break on you. It sucks that Nextcloud is a huge monolith but it is what we have.
I personally would advise against gsuite and office356 as well as it's currently debated whether they can be used in accordance to the GDPR. That's not stopping institutions and organizations... Both are very popular products, but I'd be a bit cautious and not put any sensitive stuff or personal stuff or pictures there.
That is only an issue in Europe. OP sounds like they are from the US
I also don’t think GDPR is much of a concern as there are large companies using Google and Microsoft services who seem to be fine with the risk. (I’m pretty sure Google and Microsoft also host European stuff in Europe)
There’s no “debate” about Office or G-suite and GDPR, what are you talking about?
Well, for once you need a commissioned data processing contract with Microsoft to let Microsoft (a third party) process your users private data. And probably a case-by-case study as Office365/Teams/... consists of a wide variety of different services and products and has lots of configurable options as well. And then we had the Datenschutzkonferenz come to the conclusion Office365 is not allowed in 2022. Then a big debate. The EU and several German states and different institutions doing reviews and coming to different conclusions. And the law concerning data safe harbour / EU data boundary got updated. But then we have 2025 now and the situation in the US changes daily. On the upside I believe they've all renewed the Data Privacy Framework certifications so it's legally possible to use the services. But I don't think the debate is entirely solved and over yet. And you'll get some 50+ pages PDF instructions on how to configure your company/organization's cloud office to be in line.
I suppose it's similar for Google? But I see less professional use of their cloud services, I believe it's more popular with smaller organizations and individuals. Honestly I don't know much about that one, I've never considered Google for data that need protection, as that company is one of the largest data leeches on earth.
In any case OP needs to qualify for their NGO programs, as both Google and Microsoft cost about $1,000 a year for like 15 people and that's well above their weight. And I think GDPR compliance and commissioned data processing is a business feature, that's not in your average private Google account.
So……no, there’s no debate about what you said there is debate around - GDPR.
Your cost estimates are incredibly wrong btw. Microsoft offer Microsoft 356 Business Basic for non-profits up to 300 users for free, including 1TB of OneDrive storage.
I don't think you read what I wrote. The debate is if and how cloud office solutions can be used according to law. Obviously that's about the GDPR because that's that part of the law.
And the second thing: That's what I wrote?!
poVoqThe by far easiest to try would be to order one of these: www.hetzner.com/storage/storage-share/
emhlOnly downside with hetzner storage share (compared to other managed hosting providers) is, that you need to run your own collabora instance on a VPS to use nextcloud office
And ffmpeg isn’t available on most managed hostings
MereoI Onlyoffice working by installing the plugin Community Document Server: https://apps.nextcloud.com/apps/documentserver_community
tmpodI agree it’s a nice way to try it out, though it has some limitations. Also, my experience with encryption at rest has been a mixed bag, though I think that’s just because Nextcloud’s implementation isn’t quite mature enough.
(happy cakeday!)
i'd say start small. do the the webpage on some old hardware, maybe a wiki. content consumption things that would be uncomplicated for the group to adopt. avoid things that would mean managing accounts for other people early on.
a wiki or some static page using something like modocs will be easy to run off a decent internet connection at the building. low bandwith usage and low traffic.
if your goal is to degoogle group, nextcloud could be helpful for the organisers. maybe if you have success on the simple sites you can get people on board with some hardware for a small nextcloud server. but dont plan on opening the next cloud up to the kids. thats a world of risk you don't need to open up.
Besides the time and responsibility of running the service, your biggest cost is going to be storage and maybe even transfer. None of the cheap VPS have big storage or bandwith, so I would not offer a service like this if I were you.
e8d79Honestly, I would go with a managed Nextcloud solution like Hetzner Storage Share or another reputable provider. No hassle of updating and securing the server, no data stored at Google or Microsoft, and easy to administrate by people who aren’t expert system administrators in case you are no longer available.
Yeah,came here to say that. I second that.
Haven’t tried it out, but there are some free Nextcloud hosts listed on the official website.
I simply wouldn’t. Just use Google Drive or Dropbox.
Unless you can provide redundancy and 24x7 support you don’t want others dependent on you.
VPS is not that much, especially if you aren’t storing a ton of media. Digital Ocean and Hetzner are good places to look. This will also prevent some networking headaches you’re likely to have hosting it “on prem”.
If part of your reason for doing this is to involve the kids in the process, then it’s better to do it locally. Someone in the org has or can find an unused desktop computer that you guys can have fun with for pretty much zero cost. You will probably have trouble trying to connect to it from outside your network though.
Linode. I don’t trust the parent company but who can you trust? It’s super easy to setup and like $5 a month for a small scale project that isn’t mission critical.
Note: I would never use it for a paid or really important thing. If you expect your Boy Scout group to have 50,000 users one day, it’s not fit for purpose. It’s more than fine for a little league schedule or whatever.
My nextcloud is on a relatively expensive ($5/month) VPS but I should get off my butt and move it to a $2/month one. I like to hope your organization can afford that, at least for a while. I will PM you a link where as a broke nonprofit you might be able to get a free one if you ask nicely.
I think it’s not worth trying to self-host on your own hardware unless you want to experience the hassles and headaches as a self-education or hobby goal in its own right.
If you VPS it, remember to add a snapshot backup. Such as $5 vultr VPS always add the $2 snapshot backup option.
I was curious, whats the purpose of it? The vps host should have some redundancy in case of hardware failure. Is it for user error if I accidentally delete my server?
It’s to save your data. The VPS provider has redundancies in place for the hardware, but unless you’re paying specifically for data backups, they aren’t going to bend over for that.
Linode has good, cheap VMs, and are a better deal than the AWSs of the world.
Also, when you set up Nextcloud, also set up something like samba-domain with LDAP for users. That way you have central user management as you add new services.
NexyteAs someone who has no real experience with Nextcloud: Do I ‘need’ it, when I already have a NAS with Synology Drive running on it, being accessible through Tailscale?
If there’s nothing utterly specific from the nextcloud ecosystem that you absolutely need, no, Synology has you covered
I’m not sure if they provide the service for non French organizations, but FramaSpace offers free nextcloud instances for some non profits.
My local ecology-focused organization has an instance thanks to them ♥️
We (uk scout group) use g suite or whatever they call it these days. The Google connection isn’t ideal, but we get it completely free, the t&cs and level of control over it are a lot better than consumer gmail/drive, the learning curve for techphobic users is about as shallow as possible, and we don’t have to spend volunteer time on maintaining the platform. So definitely worth it for us but your situation may vary.
Yeah, it can definetely be a great solution, but the idea for this was specifically to be more independent from big tech.
We already habdle stuff like registering for camps over Office 365, but I wanted to introduce Nextcloud to replace that, because I don’t think it’s a good idea to let Microsoft handle personal data of like a hundred people, that probably don’t even know, that they are giving away their data to Microsoft there.
But again, I don’t wanna judge anyone for using things like that, Nextcloud can be a pain to maintain, especially for non technical people.
User data is typically private on business plans, at least if you stick to the core services. Plenty of companies use O365, GSuite, or whatever to facilitate this kind of thing and I’m sure they would be pitching a huge fit if their user data was being collected.