Looking for a cheap cloud for youth organization

[JH17002723]

Hello,

i am quiet active in a youth organitation here in germany (doesnt matter which one).

We are looking for a cloud, to store pictures of day trips and make them assescible to parents.

Also we want something to work on documents together.

OneDrive, Dropbox etc. are not an options due to data security concerns.

I was immediately thinking about a nextcloud.

i've never set one up yet, so i don't know how easy it is, nor what hardware to use.

This is what i have thought of. Of Course it would be 2 RAM Sticks and 2 HDD's, we are just not sure, how much capacity we need.

Is this an sensible configuration? How long would it take to set up?

There is no cost in software, right?

 

Thanks for the help in advance.

 

Greeting from Germany!

[Silencix]

https://www.pcloud.com/cloud-storage-pricing-plans.html

 

[ju1ion]

How about a SynologyNAS like a DS218? 

They are very easy to configure and have a build-in DynDNS service, if you want to access them from somewhere else.

[scottyseng]

I would personally try to find a reburbished office desktop tower or similar, those would probably be faster than a celeron NUC. Also would have actual sata ports.

 

Or if you still desire the NUC route, why not used external USB hard drives? They're usually cheaper than buying internal ones and using an enclosure.

 

The RAM should be fine though. You just need to run ubuntu and get Nextcloud running on it.

[JH17002723]

2 hours ago, scottyseng said:

I would personally try to find a reburbished office desktop tower or similar, those would probably be faster than a celeron NUC. Also would have actual sata ports.

 

Or if you still desire the NUC route, why not used external USB hard drives? They're usually cheaper than buying internal ones and using an enclosure.

 

The RAM should be fine though. You just need to run ubuntu and get Nextcloud running on it.

I thought the exclosure would be better, so i can easily run them in RAID

[silentdragon95]

How fast is your internet connection (the upload speed in particular)? Would a hosting provider from Germany be an alternative?

 

Also, don't buy hardware on Amazon, it's usually more expensive here. Check Geizhals.de to compare prices which also has way better search filters for hardware than Amazon.

[jj9987]

The reason a lot of people opt for cloud is due to not having to deal with redundancy, backups, hardware and connection uptime etc. What happens if a hard drive or (some part of) the NUC dies? Is your Internet connection sufficient for sharing files? What if someone accidentally deletes a folder?

 

Software can be free, if you choose free software. But you still have to take care of updates, correct configuration and other maintenance to keep it up and running. If you do not have the skills or knowledge, you may have bigger problems than "OneDrive, Dropbox etc data security concerns".

 

Just something to think about before rushing to buy parts.