I considered using Nextcloud using the plugin (jail) for a while, but went with a VM (docker specifically) for a few reasons which are as follows:
When I first installed FreeNAS (which was when corral first came out) I added Nextcloud, but used the standard sql server (sqlight). That was very slow and after reading about the drawbacks of sqlight (such as being able to do one operation at a time) I went the rout of creating a MySQL container originally. Afterwards it was a good chunk faster.
Now given the way Docker is implemented in FreeNAS I have a few different VMs/Nodes (it was easier to specify specific MAC addresses previously. Now I don’t have the time/desire to get the macvlan network operational via Docker so that I can specify different MACs per container). I created a Docker VM (so RancherOS) running Postgre (as its alledgedly one of the best/stable/secure SQL platforms) & Nextcloud within the VM. I gave it access to 3gb of ram and I believe all the cores. With this it hasn’t gone over 1.5gb of ram (2 users, 1-200gb of data, 6.5gb datatabase) and it works very well.
It could be faster, I generally get a transfer speed of like 50 megabits (not bytes). Not sure what the limitation of that is, forgot, but due to the setup it doesn’t actually need to go out of the NIC. There is something I can do to get it faster, but haven’t had the need to do anything about it. And I have easy access to the DB itself if I need to make any adjustments.
Regarding the plugin you have the advatange of not having to use NFS/SMB to access a FreeNAS share (but as I said the data doesn’t actually leave the NIC so the effect of this isn’t as massive as I feared), but I’m quite sure that the SQL dB used is SQLite which has a number of disadvantages, as previously mentioned. The Docker nodes allow for more precise control of system resources assigned to it & updating any of the containers is super easy (which includes adding non-factory Nextcloud containers with other features built in).
Those are my two cents, but I feel like it’s the way to go if you don’t mind having to work a little harder than just clicking “install” in the plugins. The VMs don’t really use that many resources, but that’s on my machine which has a xenon E3 1245 v6 processor wise (and pc2133 ram, not the fastest one available).