First Time Next Cloud

[cmcigas]

Hi, I am new to FreeNAS all together and have little to no knowledge about commands for the software either. I was hoping to use the servers I was able to get my hands on as an alternative to OneDrive, since I have 13TB of usable space which is way more than OneDrive. But I have no idea how to get NextCloud up and running even after following the guides I was able to find. I do have some questions though that I would like to get answered before I try the process again on 11.2 if someone could answer.

Can I use network drives with Next Cloud? I like having the ability to just map a drive and call it a day on my desktops at home instead of using separate software in order to connect to it but still would like the ability to use the cloud service for laptops when away from home.

How do you set up multiple accounts, I would need three.

Can I set it up so that my Plex media can be stored on Next Cloud and PMS can still see everything?

From your experience, how fast are the speeds that you have seen with Next Cloud? Currently, I max out my LAN link to the server using mapped drives and for One Drive, even though my upload speed is only 35mbps I do not max that out. I don't really need that speed for uploading away from network though, but downloads from One Drive to my network does not come close to my 300mbps, I so I hoping Next Cloud can help with maxing out my bandwidth over a $10 service from Microsoft.

Thank you all

 

[samuel-emrys]

Can I use network drives with Next Cloud? I like having the ability to just map a drive and call it a day on my desktops at home instead of using separate software in order to connect to it but still would like the ability to use the cloud service for laptops when away from home.

Yes. The data dataset on your server is, at the end of the day, just a directory. You can create a share for this and put files there. This is not the normal way to use it though, in my mind it's much simpler just to have folders on your computer that "sync" to the server, so you don't need to worry about using a share - this is the way it was intended to be used. That way all your content remains local and is synced to the server when available.

How do you set up multiple accounts, I would need three.

There are user management tools in NC that allow you to do this. Each user gets their own folder in the data dataset.

Can I set it up so that my Plex media can be stored on Next Cloud and PMS can still see everything?

No reason why not, but I'm not sure I see a good reason *why* either. Plex allows you to watch your videos remotely, and a smb/nfs share allows you to edit them should you need to. Along with Sonarr/Radarr/Lidarr you can automate a lot of your media content management though.

From your experience, how fast are the speeds that you have seen with Next Cloud? Currently, I max out my LAN link to the server using mapped drives and for One Drive, even though my upload speed is only 35mbps I do not max that out. I don't really need that speed for uploading away from network though, but downloads from One Drive to my network does not come close to my 300mbps, I so I hoping Next Cloud can help with maxing out my bandwidth over a $10 service from Microsoft.

I can't really comment on this, as I've never had to test the upload/download speed. Whilst on your LAN, I don't see any reason why it wouldn't be able to saturate the connection, and the same for the WAN, where your bottleneck is going to be your connection speed at both ends. As far as responsiveness, I've found it incredibly quick using the web ui, and there are caching optimisations that you can use.

I wrote a beginner friendly guide to getting set up manually here.

 

[cmcigas]

Yes. The data dataset on your server is, at the end of the day, just a directory. You can create a share for this and put files there. This is not the normal way to use it though, in my mind it's much simpler just to have folders on your computer that "sync" to the server, so you don't need to worry about using a share - this is the way it was intended to be used. That way all your content remains local and is synced to the server when available.


There are user management tools in NC that allow you to do this. Each user gets their own folder in the data dataset.


No reason why not, but I'm not sure I see a good reason *why* either. Plex allows you to watch your videos remotely, and a smb/nfs share allows you to edit them should you need to. Along with Sonarr/Radarr/Lidarr you can automate a lot of your media content management though.



I can't really comment on this, as I've never had to test the upload/download speed. Whilst on your LAN, I don't see any reason why it wouldn't be able to saturate the connection, and the same for the WAN, where your bottleneck is going to be your connection speed at both ends. As far as responsiveness, I've found it incredibly quick using the web ui, and there are caching optimisations that you can use.

I wrote a beginner friendly guide to getting set up manually here.

Thanks for the reply, Ill take a look at the manual now but as for the syncing part, I would do that but I am not just a fan of syncing, I like most of my stuff off my computer, where I can access it from anywhere without needing to worry about the syncing. This is why I used One Drive so much, I was able to create a doc, save it to my one drive folder it would then sync and I could remove it from my computer, while still seeing it in my one drive folder. I know Next Cloud does not do this and it is something I will need to work with but I just want the more space and to stop spending $10 a month just for email and 1TB of space.

 

[samuel-emrys]

I'll qualify my earlier statement - I'm not sure how using the Nextcloud data directory as a share will affect the nextcloud installation/whether they will show up as files in NC. My method of achieving what you're trying to is just to have an SMB share for a separate dataset, and a VPN connection home for when I need access remotely.

 

[garm]

Nextcloud has two mechanisms for data population. If you install the client you can sync content to a local folder and you can select what to sync. New content will of course be syncs from this folder as well but can also be removed from the local folder using the sync selection in the app. The other way is less ideal for day to day use, external storage. In Nextcloud you can install addons. Some are officiall and built by the Nextcloud team, external storage is one. You simply add a secondary location as a folder in Nextcloud and this secondary location can then be shared using eg SMB. I would not share the main Nextcloud data directory, leave that for the database to manage.

 

[cmcigas]

I'll qualify my earlier statement - I'm not sure how using the Nextcloud data directory as a share will affect the nextcloud installation/whether they will show up as files in NC. My method of achieving what you're trying to is just to have an SMB share for a separate dataset, and a VPN connection home for when I need access remotely.

This is something I was playing around with since Thursday as well. My issue for some reason is not being able to map or access the shares on my FreeNAS system. I’m trying to work with Synology right now to see why setting up OpenVPN and allowing access to the LAN and not being able to access my shares despite being able to access the whole LAN.

Reason why I haven’t done it on my FreeNAS server is due to not be able to figure out how to whatsoever even trying to follow the guides