Hey, so I recently had the idea of proposing some new ideas, I had for the IT infrastructure of my local scouts organisation, mainly it’s own nextcloud instance and website (and if that works well, maybey a matrix server and wiki, but website and nextcloud are much higher priority right now). But, I am wondering, what the best way to do the hosting would be. Using a VPS would be pretty nice, because there would be no upfront cost, but we would have to pay monthly fee and that’s pretty hard to pitch for a new and untested idea, especially because we don’t have that much regular funds/income. The other option would be to self host on hardware that stays in the building, but I am not quite shure, but then we would have a pretty steep upfront cost and I am not 100 percent shure, if we even have a proper network in the building.
The main thing, I am trying to ask here is, if any of you have ever done something similar before and if so, how you did it. Also I am thankful for any advice in general. I have done this already for my family, but doing this for an entire organistation is an entirely different thing. Thank you very much in advance!
Given someone already pays for electricity and internet at the location, I’d say the cheapest option would be to ask all the members if someone has an old laptop to donate, maybe even with a broken display or whatever, main thing is it still somehow runs. Rip out the battery, Install Linux, Nextcloud (maybe Yunohost), and put it somewhere without public access. That’d be entirely for free, minus the work to set it up and maintain it.
My smaller VPS costs somewhere around 70€ a year, guess that could be worth it as well as long as it contributes something meaningful.
And be prepared to be disappointed, 99% of my scout group never used the selfhosted services I tried. I guess that’s somehow okay. They were focused on the real life activities and no one had any interest to do office work or remember logins… Was always the same 2 people who did paperwork and they didn’t need a cloud, so I scrapped it. Your story could be different, I’m not saying it needs to turn out that way.
Yeah, I totally get what you mean, I am kind of expecting that aswell, but at least I know, that other scouts groups in the area already have a nextcloud and it is actively beeing used, so I have some hopes in that regard. But yeah, getting them to use something like Matrix is probably pretty unrealistic.
How is the other group doing it? Could you leverage any of what they’re using?
Could you pay them to host it for you?
Good luck, though. I believe first-hand experience with living a self-determined life - including online services - aligns nicely with scout ideals. And trying to convey the media-literacy that allows people to make informed choices.
And I can see some benefits with having documents available to everyone, templates, and collaborate on the paperwork…
Glad to hear other groups in the area have success with Nextcloud… Another idea would be to somehow unite and share the hosting bill for a slightly bigger Nextcloud… But I still think the old laptop idea might be promising to get started… depending on the network situation in the building and whether you can configure port forwards and all the things that need to be done. Just make sure to have some kind of backup strategy if you put documents there. Can’t be too hard, as Nextcloud is made for syncing data… And I wouldn’t put personal information about kids there unless the admin knows what they’re doing. But there’s plenty other stuff to put there.
Since it’s a public instance you’d want to be sure to keep it pretty up-to-date with new system patches and the latest stable versions of Nextcloud. If you’re comfortable with automating updates with ansible, k8s, docker-compose, etc. then it’s not a big deal. If you’re ssh’ing to a server to manually update things then it’s going to be a lot of overhead and likely forgotten.
Old hardware may also bring its own issues and you’ll need backups especially since old hardware (especially consumer-grade stuff) can fail very unexpectedly. And providing support for users is a whole… other thing…
I like the idea of starting with the “old laptop in a basement” approach as a way to get things going to see if the service provides benefit then look to migrate to a more stable platform in the future.
Yeah, I guess the plan would be (if we decide to use an old labtop) to have a similar backup system to my home server, so one daily incremental backup with something like borgbackup to a newly bought external hard drive and automated updates using watchtower (I heard major nextcloud upgrades can be tricky though, so I an not shure if it would be a good idea to automate those). I guess it would still suck if the laptop unexpectedly failed and we would have to scramble to find new hardware though, how long would you expect an old laptop to last as a server?
Could last years? Or months? Depends on a lot of factors. Fans may not like running 24x7, memory could fail, etc.
Just be prepared for what you would do if it does.
Don’t rip out the battery, that’s free UPS!
Yes, but there’s 2 sides to that story. It’s a free UPS and that’s really nice. But then I’ve seen old batteries degrade and swell. People call it the spicy pillow syndrome. And with two of my older devices, batteries got recalled by the manufacturer. So I’d advise against running these things 24/7 unattended. Either know what you’re doing or rip it out before it burns down the building. As a minimum that includes a location made of concrete or bricks and mortar and no burnable stuff in the vicinity. And regular checks on the state of the battery, maybe both visual inspections and whatever the mainboard reports.
Never heard of that, the risk of a fire certainly outweighs a “free” UPS. Good to know.
I mean, a mechanical timer costs, like, 3 bucks in any currency and lets you set charge and discharge cycles. Add 10 bucks and you have one that you can pilot via REST API.
I believe cycling and constantly discharging and charging a battery might be even worse than letting the built-in charge controller do its job and keep the charge. I’m not an expert on battery chemistry, though. All I can say, I’ve seen desktop replacements plugged in all the time and the battery at 100% and they go bad. Thinkpads and other laptops have configurable thresholds for quite some time now. And despite me using that for my last 2 laptops, the batteries still go bad eventually. It’s supposed to help, and batteries got better, but it’s a thing to factor in.
It’s best to keep it around 50℅ and let it charge / discharge about 5%, and then charge again. See the research links on charge.org (note the bias: his business sells a dongle, but some computers like think pads come with this functionality built in.)
Just a general warning:
It is one thing to provide something for family. It is another thing to be a person in authority providing one for an org. And kids are horrible and basically all have cameras everywhere they go. They WILL do something horrible and, depending on what that something is, you might now be liable for a lot of stuff you don’t want to be.
You don’t want that smoke. They can use google drive. Or you can talk to one of the companies that host next/own clouds for people and ask for a discount since it is the boy scouts.
Asking for a discount is a great idea. Some companies do this. And in rare occurences the boss is an old boy scout themselves and they’ll give you a 100% discount on some smaller things…
Do you think “alright kids, meeting is officially over. Go home or call your parents. If anyone wants to stay we will be hanging out and teaching server stuff at ____ ‘s house for an hour or two.” Gets around this?
Homie? I want you to know that while I am going to be inflammatory, I am not insulting you. In a slightly sane world, that should be fine.
NEVER work with children. “Hey kids. You can go home or you can stay with me and a few others and learn how to use a computer!”. At best you are setting yourself up for some awkward phone calls when Little Jimmy gets caught looking at something his parents don’t approve of.
If you are a close family friend and the parents understand what you are going to be teaching their kid (and obviously want you to teach it), go for it. If you are just watching them while they eat orange slices? Don’t fucking go anywhere near that. Let the teachers who actually train in how to handle these situations do it.
And the other aspect: Kids (and most adults) are not rational or intelligent. They aren’t going to take “Hey, if Susie sends you nudes don’t put them on this server because it will get me sent to prison as a diddler” as education on why they should not fucking do that.
If you ever want to get scared straight as it were? Take a teacher out for drinks (and you better pay for them!). You’ll hear LOTS of horror stories and get even a glimpse into the kind of hell they have to put up with.
The show Black-ish (like a lot of Kenya Barris’s work) has a LOT of problems. But the number of times teacher friends have shared https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jqmj0ILwfM. And it is not at all exclusive to black people (or even men).
Honestly, I would go with a managed Nextcloud solution like Hetzner Storage Share or another reputable provider. No hassle of updating and securing the server, no data stored at Google or Microsoft, and easy to administrate by people who aren’t expert system administrators in case you are no longer available. I also went with that route for my personal instance because it was actually cheaper than hosting it myself on a VPS.
The by far easiest to try would be to order one of these: https://www.hetzner.com/storage/storage-share/
I agree it’s a nice way to try it out, though it has some limitations. Also, my experience with encryption at rest has been a mixed bag, though I think that’s just because Nextcloud’s implementation isn’t quite mature enough.
(happy cakeday!)
I’m not sure if they provide the service for non French organizations, but FramaSpace offers free nextcloud instances for some non profits.
My local ecology-focused organization has an instance thanks to them ♥️
Hetzner Storage Share
Hey, what’s your budget? You could go far with a second-hand NUC (next unit of computing), I’m sure you can get one for under $100 and you could do more than just nextcloud with it (peertube, VPN, chat etc).
I personally think this is a better idea than an old laptop. Easier to work on if the fan or SSD ever dies, and the cooling is a little better than any cheaper laptops I have worked on. It also wouldn’t need to be a NUC, basically every PC company makes a SFF or 1L sized computer, I’m partial to the Lenovo but the Dell’s are pretty nice too. I have about 8 Lenovo that are used as mini servers between home and work, on 24/7
Hardware does not need a steep upfront costs.
You don’t need a nasa pc to run nextcloud, larger businesses routinely trow away machines that are beyond what you need. Chances are family of a member already has some machines they where going to trow away. Your hardware priorities are most cpu cores with as much compatible ram.
The advantages of having your own hardware is you can run multiple local servers and let members experience without additional costs. Imagine it like a private mini internet run by members that only is accessible at location.
I highly recommend proxmox as a server os which has 1 line helper script commands that create a whole nextcloud installation and others automatically, its also very easy to backup those.
run the nextcloud-all-in-one on an old laptop
My nextcloud is on a relatively expensive ($5/month) VPS but I should get off my butt and move it to a $2/month one. I like to hope your organization can afford that, at least for a while. I will PM you a link where as a broke nonprofit you might be able to get a free one if you ask nicely.
I think it’s not worth trying to self-host on your own hardware unless you want to experience the hassles and headaches as a self-education or hobby goal in its own right.
There are dozens of reputable website hosting companies, and Microsoft offer 365 for free to non-profits up to 300 users iirc.
This takes care of basically everything you need, without any risk to you or the scouts. You definitely do not want to be hosting a website and file server for a public company on an old laptop in a cupboard.
Haven’t tried it out, but there are some free Nextcloud hosts listed on the official website.
Linode has good, cheap VMs, and are a better deal than the AWSs of the world.
Also, when you set up Nextcloud, also set up something like
samba-domainwith LDAP for users. That way you have central user management as you add new services.Look into digital ocean. They have pretty cheap hosting, like $6 a month last time I checked. You used to be able to get a month for free too. If it looks like a good option I can probably rustle you up a referral code.
I think that is for a shared CPU not a dedicated CPU. Nextcloud can be resource intensive in some cases so you probably do not want to run it on a shared plan.
I understand what you’re saying, but I think the user counts and usages would matter big time. I used to run it on the smallest plan DO offered, but I haven’t in a few years now. No idea if the usage requirements have grown over time, and that was just for 2 users. I know a lot of people run it on a NAS in a VM or container, that’s not exactly a dedicated machine either.
I‘d probably go with a VPS. It probably won‘t cost more than 10$/month, maybe even less, depending on how much heavy usage your Nextcloud instance requires. And you won‘t have to worry about keeping your hardware and network running, which pretty much always takes up more time than expected.
Some web hosters (I‘ve had very good experiences with Hetzner) charge an hourly rate and allow you to preconfigure VPSes with software like Nextcloud. So unless you have specific needs, you could just spin up an instance, check if it suits your needs and, if not, only pay a few cents.
