Looking for a self-hosted file share tool

bnrstnr

This is exactly what we use Nextcloud for. We used to use Citrix ShareFile, and our users are having no problems with Nextcloud since the initial setup kinks were fixed (all of which were my fault :loudly_crying_face: )

Edit: we don't share nearly as much "out," as we do receive files from our customers.

guyinpv

@bnrstnr
Good to know. Can you set up anonymous upload drops or does each user need an account?

coliver

@guyinpv said in Looking for a self-hosted file share tool:

anonymous upload

https://docs.nextcloud.com/server/10/user_manual/files/file_drop.html

JaredBusch

I use this functionality rarely in Nextcloud, but I do use it. It works well.

bnrstnr

@guyinpv said in Looking for a self-hosted file share tool:

Good to know. Can you set up anonymous upload drops or does each user need an account?

Here are all the options. Yes, you can have anonymous uploads.

https://i.imgur.com/XGsVM6H.png

guyinpv

What would you say NextCloud most resembles as far as a commercial product? Can it directly replace everything done by Dropbox, and/or Box, and/or Google Drive, OneDrive, etc?

I am also migrating us off Box and originally was going to use OneDrive because we have Office365 until I learned that shared folders in OD can't even sync to computers, making it 100% useless as a file share tool.

So along with this public uploading file share project, I'm also wanting to replace Box and OneDrive with a better company file share system.

My biggest fear is self-hosting, I just don't want maintenance and support issues, I want things to be extremely robust, this is a twitchy company that tends to explode when our apps/services don't work right.

coliver

@guyinpv said in Looking for a self-hosted file share tool:

What would you say NextCloud most resembles as far as a commercial product? Can it directly replace everything done by Dropbox, and/or Box, and/or Google Drive, OneDrive, etc?

Yes.

bnrstnr

@guyinpv said in Looking for a self-hosted file share tool:

My biggest fear is self-hosting, I just don't want maintenance and support issues, I want things to be extremely robust, this is a twitchy company that tends to explode when our apps/services don't work right.

I believe you can pay for hosted service, with support, too, if you prefer.

scottalanmiller

@guyinpv said in Looking for a self-hosted file share tool:

What would you say NextCloud most resembles as far as a commercial product? Can it directly replace everything done by Dropbox, and/or Box, and/or Google Drive, OneDrive, etc?

Yes, it does everything you'd expect from a big commercial service.

scottalanmiller

@bnrstnr said in Looking for a self-hosted file share tool:

@guyinpv said in Looking for a self-hosted file share tool:

My biggest fear is self-hosting, I just don't want maintenance and support issues, I want things to be extremely robust, this is a twitchy company that tends to explode when our apps/services don't work right.

I believe you can pay for hosted service, with support, too, if you prefer.

Yup, that's not hard to find.

scottalanmiller

@guyinpv said in Looking for a self-hosted file share tool:

@bnrstnr
Good to know. Can you set up anonymous upload drops or does each user need an account?

We use this, it's awesome.

momurda

You can get hosted, here is a list from the nextcloud site.
https://nextcloud.com/providers/

guyinpv

I typically use VULTR, and they have it as a default app so I just ran that. Installed without a hitch on Ubuntu 16.04.
Did some initial configuring and a couple users. Now uploading a few gigs of some of our files.

Anything I need to know about running this? Troubleshooting common issues? Ways to make it perform better? Tricks or tips?

Note that our users don't use the web interface, I couldn't pay them enough to make them use a web interface for file management. All that matters is how robust the windows sync tool is.

scottalanmiller

Until recently we used Vultr and Fedora for NC and it worked well. RAM was tight for sure, though.

guyinpv

@scottalanmiller said in Looking for a self-hosted file share tool:

Until recently we used Vultr and Fedora for NC and it worked well. RAM was tight for sure, though.

$5 box on VULTR is 1GB now. You think we'd stretch that with about 12 users and moderate activity on mostly Word/Excel files of about 13GB total?

scottalanmiller

@guyinpv said in Looking for a self-hosted file share tool:

@scottalanmiller said in Looking for a self-hosted file share tool:

Until recently we used Vultr and Fedora for NC and it worked well. RAM was tight for sure, though.

$5 box on VULTR is 1GB now. You think we'd stretch that with about 12 users and moderate activity on mostly Word/Excel files of about 13GB total?

Oh you are looking at the non-storage units?

Yeah. It'll struggle but work.

guyinpv

@scottalanmiller Interesting. Well if that's the case I just bump up to the $10 plan. Still cheaper than any other service charging $5 to $10 per user.

I tried to give Turnkey Cloud a try and boy was that a joke.

scottalanmiller

@guyinpv said in Looking for a self-hosted file share tool:

@scottalanmiller Interesting. Well if that's the case I just bump up to the $10 plan. Still cheaper than any other service charging $5 to $10 per user.

At 1GB of RAM, even with swap space added, I found it often failing to be able to update. 2GB should be perfectly fine, though.

We have it with 12GB now, but we aren't using nearly that much.

guyinpv

I've put nodequery on it to monitor resource use, it'll alert me if anything goes above 80%. I'll be curious to see how it behaves as I add the users onto it.

guyinpv

With all our files uploaded, and just me and my test laptop connected, it's using about 360MB RAM.