Self-Hosted Cloud Users Frustrated by Complexity
44 posts across 5 communities in the last 30 days; 61% from r/selfhosted.
“I am dropping Nextcloud because their AIO is awful and they don’t seem to care. Tired of trying to rebuild my own stack. [re: Nextcloud on Proxmox: AIO VM, LXC, or community script. What fits my setup?]”
“I just use a spreadsheet in Proton Drive. After causing my own issues that made my self-hosted stuff unavailable, I decided to host documentation somewhere in the cloud. Hard to fix an issue when the documentation is unavailable because of the same issue I'm trying to fix. [re…”
“Ive gone back to using sync-in. Even nextcloud, which does have full functionality on linux, has really janky app layouts on kde. I got seadrive working via someone's very helpful script to add in context functionality but it was only half working. Sync-in allows you to do…”
Users attempting to self-host their own cloud solutions, particularly Nextcloud, are experiencing significant pain points. These include difficult upgrades, performance issues, unreliable apps, and a general lack of user-friendliness that demands sysadmin expertise beyond their skillset. The desire is for a simple, reliable file syncing solution.
SOURCES (60)
“Sure thing bud. [re: Setting up my own family cloud drive for the first time - Nextcloud or Opencloud?]”
“Yeah I honestly wouldn't even consider a OpenStack deployment unless I was at a very large org or an MSP. MicroCloud is just soooo much easier to manage for doing the basics, virtual compute/networking/storage. [re: Anyone moved from VMware + NSX to OpenStack? Looking for real-world experiences]”
“Then OpenCloud is the better choice. OpenCloud has calendar and contacts though via Baikal or so. And they're planning to integrate Stalwart for that. So even if calendar and contacts become relevant for you, you will be good. [re: Setting up my own family cloud drive for the first time - Nextcloud or Opencloud?]”
“for a family drive i'd weigh maintenance over speed. nextcloud has the bigger ecosystem and every guide on the internet assumes it, which matters a lot when something breaks at 11pm. opencloud is lighter and nicer day to day but it's younger so you'll hit rougher edges. whichever one you pick for files, put the photos in immich instead, everyone in the family will thank you for that [re: Setting up my own family cloud drive for the first time - Nextcloud or Opencloud?]”
“I've been fiddling with a Ugreen NAS I got a few months ago and meanwhile I've set up several little container projects using the inbuilt docker engine and app. However, the main aim was to move away from things like OneDrive and Google Drive, so now it's time to set up a cloud drive service. From what I've read, Nextcloud is the more established, widely used service, but the newer Opencloud is seemingly much faster and sleeker to use. However, I don't seem to get a clear use”
“Nextcloud has a file request feature. [re: Options for third-party user file uploads?]”
“Have you tried OpenCloud and SeaFile? I have them both running with OneDrive, and I miss in those two thumbnails for images. Do I have something setup wrong? [re: OneDrive alternative that can handle more than 400.000 files]”
“Hard to have one solution for every thing. With Open source, you can do Zabbix + OSSEC/Wazuh + Elastic to get all into one place. For paid products, I know (and use) Trunc (trunc.org) to import all our logs and alerts into one place (including uptime). [re: Looking for an all-in-one server monitoring, logging & uptime solution]”
“I am dropping Nextcloud because their AIO is awful and they don’t seem to care. Tired of trying to rebuild my own stack. [re: Nextcloud on Proxmox: AIO VM, LXC, or community script. What fits my setup?]”
“I worked on/with OpenStack for years, but my knowledge is not up-to-date. It works very well for what it does and easy enough to set, for simple things. If you have a few clusters to manage it won't be too hard but complex setups will challenge you and complex cases were always a painpoint. If you have something that builds VMs for you, see if you can rebuild it inside OpenStack and migrate, it might be simpler. There are dev all-in-one solutions that you can try on a single machine to exper”
“nice project! what does it set it apart from every other app that makes a cloud drive act as a local drive? and what do you mean with "self hosting your own drive" when the storage is actually a third party? I'm not sure if its misleading or I am not understanding the concept. [re: YourDrive: selfhost-able drive for your media]”
“Im missing a function to share a notebook with other people in nextcloud, so they can work together. Is there something like that today?”
“Yes, redo it, and the reason matters: OpenCloud (like oCIS, which it's forked from) uses a "decomposed" storage layout by default. Files are stored as blobs plus separate metadata nodes, not as a plain folder tree. Files dropped straight into the data dir aren't registered properly, and it'll likely choke trying to make sense of them, which may be what's hanging the box. So stop OpenCloud, remove the files you copied in (back up its data dir first if there's anythin”
“Actually as for now i only sacrifice my old computer doing docker and tunnel with cloudflare for my webapp. But as for time, i think it need more storage power. Thats why i want to move to bigger devices. Also i thought creating own VPS could be more secure as i thinked that this VPS is just like Virtual Computer so if any bad thing happen it only happen to the small portion that i pushed to become virtual rather than a whole devices. [re: How to safely Create Local Computer act like VPS for alt”
links don't work [re: Nextcloud/filebrowser alternative in GO]
“I use paperless-ngx which I run in a container at home. I reckon it’s the most amazing bit of my homelab. Before that I used OneDrive because the app included OCR and at the time Dropbox and gdrive and all the other alternatives did not include ocr. [re: iPhone Document Scanner & Obsidian Upload]”
“Jellyfin and Nextcloud. I use both daily. Maintenance is mostly hands off after I got them set up and secured. I wrote my own systemd drop in to put additional restrictions on Jellyfin, both services get protected by Fail2Ban and more. I get daily emails from rkhunter and logwatch to let me know if anything suspicious has happened. Jellyfin gets its updates from apt, though I don't have them automated like I do regular system security updates because Jellyfin has gone thru a number of change”
“Hey, just to let you know; Pingvin Share isn‘t maintained anymore. I share files over nextcloud now. [re: My first server was a free PC from school. Now I have 52 services. What did you start with ?]”
“You can make NAS from your old pc for backups. Nextcloud on local network and 2 hdd drives in zfs file system for example [re: Any ideas where to get cheap/reliable HDDs (germany/europe)?]”
“Why not go bare metal or Umbrel and install HA as an Umbrel App? Or a 'regular' distro and runtipi? [re: Nextcloud on Proxmox: AIO VM, LXC, or community script. What fits my setup?]”
“Seconded, but you still may get sync issues if you use multiple computers/devices at the same time. You end up with hundreds of .json config files that you’ll have to clean out every so often. I switched to using GitHub instead for this reason [re: Brand new to Obsidian as a former Notion user. ( help )]”
“TL;DR LightCraft's catalog is already an append only log of human readable operations with snapshots. That is the ideal shape for syncing a library between computers (and people) over dumb storage. Please add an opt in "Sync target": ship log segments to storage the user owns, merge them deterministically on other devices, and optionally vault the originals. No vendor server, no telemetry, and local first stays the default. How Lightroom does it Lightroom Classic keeps the catalog as an SQLite d”
“Owncloud le plus simple et léger ! Puis Opencloud, puis NextCloud ! [re: is nextCloud still the go to for a Google Drive replacement ?]”
“All vms are running on Proxmox and backed up nightly to Proxmox Backup Server. Important VMs (to keep costs down) are replicated from PBS to Wasabi S3. 1TB of Wasabi is only about $7/month and lets me keep a great back up of my Immich server. My NAS is replicated to another NAS for now, not a great solution, but it'd be too cost prohibitive to back up to the cloud. [re: How do you backup your home lab?]”
“It can be hosted anywhere but the best option I think is a hetzner VPS as its cheap ($14 box is fine). I've got detailed deployment instructions in the docs too. It runs out the box with SQLite and then when you're ready to scale it there's a PostgreSQL migration script. All you need to do is Unzip and run python run.py and it will know its the first time and load the onbaording wizard. I can also help with hosting if needed I do managed hosting for a few directories. Support - I pro”
“I'm trying to set up something that will automatically sync files between an android device and a W11 PC that would be my mainly used PC. I have a separate drive I shared with Syncthing, but when I attempt to open those files on android, they seem to be encrypted, there's no file type and they get nested into several folders Is there an easy way to change this behavior so it will produce a usable file on the android device? submitted by /u/OkRepublic9449 [link] [comment”
“I just use a spreadsheet in Proton Drive. After causing my own issues that made my self-hosted stuff unavailable, I decided to host documentation somewhere in the cloud. Hard to fix an issue when the documentation is unavailable because of the same issue I'm trying to fix. [re: Inventory and documentation]”
“No, it syncs from anywhere: the server is reachable over the internet through a Cloudflare tunnel if you don't have a domain, no port forwarding needed”
“Thanks, yes I know that sync is not backup. As mentioned, I already have a back up system in Google drive :)”
“I build free Android apps for Nextcloud, and the longer I do it the more obvious it gets that accessibility is something I check at the end, if at all. I suspect that is true for a lot of this community. We optimize for privacy and control, and then ship something that only works if you can see it, tap precisely, and read fast. So I would rather ask than guess. If you use a screen reader, switch control, voice input, magnification, or anything else, I am curious about: Where does self-hosting br”
“Yeah, depends a lot on how you’re installing Nextcloud. I have mine on Unraid (basically a glorified Docker Compose stack, as it’s the AIO version) but for months I was trying to get a kubernetes / helm deployment working… my god that was torture. Never tried installing it directly on metal but I know that’s an option too. And then there’s just the “vanilla” docker container, though you have to spin up things like storage and kv store yourself. But yeah if all you want is the Dropbox- or Drive-l”
Seafile is way less headache and the sync actually works
“Nextcloud AIO worked fine for me. But lot of alternatives seafile, owncloud, opencloud , syncthing etc”
What kind of issues? Any messages in the logs files or Nextcloud ?
“I’m a beginner into self hosting and currently using Nextcloud as an alternative to Google Drive. I want to self host my own office doc drive but am having issues with editing docs with Nextcloud. Are there alternatives to Nextcloud that is easier for beginners? submitted by /u/Boltiply [link] [comments]”
“The hardware piece is the hard part. Whatever box you pick, the uplink (hotel Wi-Fi, 5G, or Starlink) still sets the ceiling, so the real goal is not wasting what you have when the connection keeps dropping. One software-side option: a laptop or mini PC at the hotel with a watch folder, so each card dump starts uploading by itself while the next card is being shot, and it resumes after drops instead of restarting over VPN. Full disclosure, I work on Boita (boita.io), which does exactly that leg:”
“You mean create a lower authority account like "server_dude" and then install Cosmos Cloud on that user and then it will only view the SSD?”
“I got this e-mail from my self-hosted Nextcloud server. This happened because I had a local device that was sending an expired App password repeatedly, which made Nextcloud suspect the localhost itself. Just sharing it for giggles! submitted by /u/ashishs1 [link] [comments]”
“I have been using openmediavault as my NAS os for a while and it has been working great. I have been using its smb/cifs or NFS share to give access to files across my home network. This network share is used as a persistence storage for my containers either run on docker or k8s nodes. (fx. glance dashboard config file, navidrome's music storage and config) But recently i needed a webdav server to do a sync for my super-productivity service. So, i have run a copyparty container on the openmed”
“Running a few client web apps (Node/Next.js) on a single Ubuntu server. Current setup: Nginx in front as the reverse proxy PM2 keeps the Node processes alive and restarts them on crash Cloudflare Tunnel, so no ports are open on the box Tailscale for SSH, so I can get in from anywhere without exposing port 22 It's boring and I know where every log lives, which I like. The part that scares me is the box itself dying and taking everything with it. How are you handling off-site backups for a sin”
“"Would be awesome if you could connect webdav directly, so like, nextcloud or maybe even jellyfin" "Nextcloud support would be cool" Question to answer: It's supported already if mounted on OS, so unclear whether it makes sense for goonlib itself to also support it.”
“Expected behaviour If the Nextcloud Files app process dies, the next sync should reconnect to the SSO service. If it can't, the app should say that the Nextcloud Files app needs to be opened. A generic "server could not be reached" error is misleading. Retries should not leave service connections open. Actual behaviour After Android's low memory killer killed com.nextcloud.client , every sync attempt failed with: The server was reachable the whole time, and no requests reached it after the proce”
“Currently buckets are listed as not included in the sync setup. It would be handy to have those be able to sync as well. Each bucket having its own folder based on the bucket name, a JSON file including the bucket JSON and an Attachments subfolder containing all the bucket attachments. We use buckets for module files with reusable code that often gets modified/updated. Being able to make those modifications in VSCode and sync to our GitHub repo that's configured for sync to xyOps would make that”
“Hi, I did some googling and checked the docs, but haven't found a way to mount multiple non sibling folders into the VM. I know a workaround is to mount a common parent to several folders. But that imposes some limitations in how your repos are laid out, and doesn't allow you to easily exclude some repos from an agent but include some other for another. My current example is an agent working a datalake models repo that requires read only access to the backend repo so it can get the DB models and”
“I have had bad experience with nextcloud.. one wrong update and you are screwed.. not very confidence inducing imo. Luckily with AI , i was able to udpate after nearly 2 years. Its still gives error , luckily with chatgpt , i was able to solve”
“Synology Drive is the one thing I miss from my Synology. I wish that application and service could be self hosted.”
“Currently I am using remotely-save plugin and self hosted sync. It is working good so far.”
“I'm not understanding your objection. Syncthing does exactly what you're describing, you can choose which files do and don't sync. And it's perfect if you have a self-hosted server, everything syncs to the server real-time and each device can download any updated files as soon as it comes online. I use Syncthing for my Obsidian vaults between my NAS, computer, and laptop, and it's worked flawlessly. My NAS is always online so it acts as my cloud server in real-time, different”
“Is there a good alternative to Nextcloud for storage and office suite? Or, is there a high performance version/config of Nextcloud? submitted by /u/EatsHisYoung [link] [comments]”
Sync Engine with WebDAV connection to your server or NAS
“Hi, I've been working as a sysadmin and developer for about 15 years, currently in an SME. And one thing I've been dealing with for quite a while is the gap between running sovereign/self-hosted services and actually getting users to use them in their normal daily workflow. Nextcloud itself works well for us, but users spend most of their day in applications like Outlook or Thunderbird. As soon as using Nextcloud means opening another browser tab, navigating to Files, creating a share an”
“There are two kinds of remote folders. The easy ones just clones between the clients and the server, each client has a copy. The client has no copy but the filenames inside the remote folder. If a client opens a file it is transfered from the server. 1) Works great on linux. 2) Works on windows as expected but on linux you need to run an ugly tool and select the files you like to have local. Maybe that has changed with the actual version of seafile, i don't know.”
“I am looking for a good solution for the following scenario: I want to store folders with PDFs, DOCXs, etc. but also integrate that with a service that allows me, on my laptop and phone, to annotate those documents and just read them. I looked around and found many options; I don't know what to choose. I have been using Google Drive and Google Docs, so maybe self-hosted alternatives that have a good UI, many integrations, and just work well and reliable. Thank you very much in advance.”
“Ive gone back to using sync-in. Even nextcloud, which does have full functionality on linux, has really janky app layouts on kde. I got seadrive working via someone's very helpful script to add in context functionality but it was only half working. Sync-in allows you to do everything locally via the app, which is at least a workable solution. Seafile sync client being forced to light-mode only was the last straw. If they can't get basic UI right then I can't trust them to get anythin”
“Oooh thats actually what I want to get set up soon. How did you get immich and opencloud to work together and how do you have your sync set up? Wouldnt they fight each other?”