Hey, folks!
So, the card linked to my hetzner account expired, and while I updated it everywhere else, the hetzner info fell through the cracks. They deleted my storageshare server, and erased everything, because I’m a fool, and didn’t have their emails going to an account I ever check. I’ve spent the last several days feeling like I’d had a digital housefire. Things kept popping into my head, photos I had taken 10 years ago, or early drafts of the novel I’m writing… It’s been pretty fucking depressing.
But, tonight, I fired up a laptop I haven’t used in a while to find that most of what was in nextcloud was backed up on it. It’s not everything, but it’s the bulk of it.
I’d like for this to never happen again. I’m wondering if there’s a complete idiot’s guide to self hosting nextcloud? When I say I know nothing about this, please believe me. We’re talking starting from scratch. I’ve never self hosted anything, and I have no idea where to begin. I’m on fedora silverblue, but just because I’m using linux doesn’t mean I know anything. It just means I’m cheap. Haha. All I know is that I never want to go through that feeling of complete loss again. I’ll make sure that whatever I do, it’ll be backed up in two locations at least. I was paying for the family plan, and my brother, his wife, my mom, and a friend lost access to their stuff, too. So far as I know, there isn’t a back up of their stuff. I really messed up here.
Any help is really appreciated, thanks in advance!
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I’ve always wondered if Backblaze B2 would accept advance payments. I would love that
B2 warns you, in advance, if your payment mechanism is expiring. And then, they don’t immediately delete your account or data if you’re late.
If you find out they accept advance payment, let me know; and I’ll do the same. Based on their charge model, you won’t be able to pay for X months, but I’d like to, say, have an account balance they will draw on if my payments fail.
I’m in particular considering the case of my untimely death. I have instructions for my family to get at all the backups, just in case, but if I die dealing with that is going to be really low on their list of priorities. I’d like to know that, 6 months after my CC stops working, my family will still be able to access my backups if they need to.
I double back-up onto SSD, but still.
I would like account credits too, but I don’t know if they do that for single users. I do think they have something like that for enterprises
Yeah, it’d be cool to put like $50 there and get notified if it drops below $15 or whatever.
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Check if you’re behind CGNAT
The allocated address block for CGNAT is 100.64.0.0/10, i.e. IP addresses from 100.64.0.0 to 100.127.255.255. If your routers WAN IP is one of those then selfhosting stuff accessible from outside requires a lot more work. Ask your ISP if you can have a public IP address and what the cost is or go into the rabbit hole of bypassing cgnat with a vps. -
If you’re gonna host data, especially other peoples data*, learn and use the 3-2-1 backup strategy
For proxmox which I talk about more further down you can look into their own Proxmox backup server solution. -
Data redundancy, either through BIOS/UEFI RAID1 (for two disks) or RAID10 (for four disks) or by running ZFS
This isn’t a backup, this is about being able to replace a faulty drive without downtime and having an easier rebuild process compared to restoring from backup. -
Virtualization, for a beginner that already runs linux I would recommend Proxmox
This makes it more complicated to get started but easier to maintain the installation and easier to migrate it to new hardware.
It also allows you more room to learn by doing, that’s the bonus of the easier restore, cloning and snapshotting of virtual machines compared to bare metal.
*If you’re new to selfhosting then begin with yourself and having only local in-house access. As a step 2 learn how to setup a vpn for access from the outside. Step 3 would be learning how to use a reverse proxy, lets-encrypt and so on for SSL access without vpn.
Very good advices!
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One tip would be to use email addresses that you actually check for mission critical accounts.
Or at least setup a redirect rule to one that you do check
Regardless of how you host Nextcloud, what you described is one thing I really like about Nextcloud: the major part of it being synced to several devices. As long as you have a computer with the desktop client that’s on every once in a while, your stuff is saved across different devices.
I’ve had a similar thing happen once btw, deleted the wrong server. It was “just” monitoring data, but I had spent a lot of effort building it properly. I eventually started over it, but knowing the whole thing is gone feels really bad.
Nextcloud AIO via docker is super simple and has clear instructions.
Install docker through whatever tools Fedora has to install packages/rpms/whatever. Then follow steps 2, 3 and 4 at least. 5 if you need it.
If your main motivation is never going through that kind of digital loss, please please please do yourself a favor and do not rely solely on a local solution. If there’s a fire in your apartment, the best nextcloud setup isn’t going to do shit for you. Look up the 3-2-1 rule if you want to be safe.
Exactly!
And if your budget is constrained, pick offsite backups over RAID, because RAID isn’t a backup. Offsite can be as simple as a drive you leave at work and resync a couple times/year, or a service you pay for monthly. In either case, regularly check that the data is good (e.g. for hosted services, ensure payments are still being processed).
Beyond your eventual technical solution, keep this in mind: untested backups don’t exist.
I recommend reading some documentation about industry-leading solutions like Veeam… you won’t be able to reproduce all of the enterprise-level functionality, at least not without spending a lot of money, but you can try to reproduce the basic practices of good backup systems.
Whatever system you implement, draft a testing plan. A simpler backup solution that you can test and validate will be worth more than something complex and highly detailed.
