Nextcloud, 2nd hand server for cheap

[Dujith]

So i have been running Nextcloud for a while, it started as Owncloud on windows server but since they dropped support in later versions i switched to a Ubuntu server a while ago.

Since then it has been running as a VM under Hyper V. With Veeam as backup this has been the perfect solution for us.

 

I wanted to build a server for just Nextcloud with the added bonus of getting some quicker storage as i write alot of small files and the original server tends to choke a bit on them sometimes.

Now a quick search online found me quite a few old servers for around 140 Euro's - HP Proliant DL360 with 2x Xeon L5520 16GB, no storage.

 

So my plan is to add 4 fast drives in a Raid 0 and install Hyper V headless server so i can just migrate the VM and keep the Veeam backup going.

Raid 0 would not be an issue as i have the Veeam backup and every computer as backup for files. 

 

Anyone here running a Nextcloud server and knows what the minimum hardware is for fast small file operation? i take it the hardware would be more then enough for 5-6 users (maybe even overkill) 

And maybe a more trustworthy place to buy 2nd hand servers? I'm located in NL

[NelizMastr]

If you handle massive streams of small files, you'll want IOPS rather than sheer throughput. SSD caching might be something you want to look into. 

 

Also, while a back-up solution is a great thing that plenty of people overlook (kudos to you  ) Redundancy isn't something to sneeze at when it comes to availability. How important is it to you and your users that the server is available? If it's merely a convenience that's accessed every so often, then I'm not 100% against a RAID0 to boost performance, but if it needs to be accessed regularly throughout the day I'd look into a solution like RAID1+0/RAID10 which offers speed and reliability at the cost of storage capacity.

[Dujith]

@NelizMastr

It would be a minor annoyance since the way that Nextcloud works is that all the files are available offline. Most work at je jobs is done with laptops. With many times no access to internet besides hotspots  on which i tend to pause nextcloud anyway.

 

I checked raid 10 after your reply and seems the best for me? we just have around 9GB while that may grow i wont be needing anything bigger then 250GB for a long while.

[NelizMastr]

As long as you have a RAID controller that'll do RAID10, it should be a decent solution. At work, we alsways spec out servers with RAID10 + a dedicated hotspare. Costly, yes, but performance and availability are pretty damn good so far.

 

A word of warning regarding HP servers: if you're not using HP firmware drives, it'll be louder than usual. This is normal behaviour.