Nextcloud VPS

Who it suits

Replacing Dropbox or Google Drive, and sharing calendars and contacts, for a household or small team. AIO needs a domain of its own and wants the server to itself. To sync files between your own devices only, Syncthing is lighter; for a shared drive with no upkeep, a hosted service is easier.

Which plan

Standard (2 vCPU, 4 GB) is the smallest plan we offer it on: Nextcloud, its database, Redis and AIO's helpers run at once, and each PHP worker may use up to 512 MB. Choose Extreme for several active users, Office editing or Talk calls. Disk is the other limit: 80 GB on Standard and 160 GB on Extreme, for everything you sync.

What we install

Nextcloud All-in-One (AIO) is the install method Nextcloud recommends: one mastercontainer that sets up and updates Nextcloud, its database, Redis, HTTPS and optional apps such as Talk and Office. We run it as its README says, except that its setup page listens on 127.0.0.1:8080 instead of every address. Your files live in Docker volumes that AIO manages.

From order to ready

1. Server ready. We email you when the server is running, and you can log in with SSH. The installer starts on that same first boot.
2. Installer running. It logs to /var/log/vps9-setup.log; tail -f it to watch.
3. Application ready. /var/lib/vps9-setup.exit appears when the installer has finished, holding 0 if it worked. AIO is ready when docker ps lists nextcloud-aio-mastercontainer and its setup page answers on https://127.0.0.1:8080 on the server. Nextcloud itself starts once you've given AIO your domain.

What you still do

1. Point a domain such as cloud.example.com at the server and allow 443 in the panel firewall (and 3478 TCP and UDP if you'll use Talk).
2. From your computer, run ssh -L 8080:127.0.0.1:8080 root@<your IPv4>, open https://localhost:8080, accept the self-signed certificate warning, copy the passphrase it shows and log in.
3. Enter your domain, choose the optional apps and start the containers. When AIO is done it shows Nextcloud's initial admin password: save it, log in at your domain and turn on two-factor login.
4. In AIO, set a backup location and turn on daily backups.

Exposure and security

AIO's setup page shows its login passphrase to whoever opens it first, so it listens on 127.0.0.1:8080 and you reach it through an SSH tunnel; we don't publish AIO's ports 80 and 8443 at all. When you start Nextcloud, AIO publishes port 443 with its own Let's Encrypt certificate, and 3478 (TCP and UDP) if you turn on Talk. The mastercontainer controls Docker through its socket, as AIO requires, which is as powerful as root: keep its passphrase safe.

Backups and upgrades

AIO updates Nextcloud and its containers when you press its update button, or every night if you turn on daily backups with automatic updates. Its backups use BorgBackup to a directory you choose; copy that off the server. We turn on the operating system's automatic security updates (security fixes only); the server never reboots by itself. We run the hardware, the network and the first-boot install; after that, Nextcloud is yours to run, and we don't manage, update or back it up for you.

Order it from your terminal

$ vps9 servers create --plan standard --image ubuntu-24.04 --app nextcloud --hostname web-1 --key key_8f2c

{
  "plan": "standard",
  "image": "ubuntu-24.04",
  "hostname": "web-1",
  "app": "nextcloud"
}