Nextcloud on VM or Docker? Best set-up for proper backups? (mander.xyz)

submitted 1 year ago by notsofunnycomment@mander.xyz to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world

22 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Hi all, sorry if this has been asked/discussed before (I couldn't find any directly overlapping posts):

I have been running the Nextcloud snap now for quite some time, and although things have run quite smoothly, I never really managed to properly back things up.

I make weekly backups of the database, config and data, but it's very hard and time consuming to glue these elements back together. And as they say: when you can't check whether a backup works, it's not really a backup.

I have been experimenting with KVM/qemu lately and things look pretty great. The idea of simply backing up the entire OS that runs Nextcloud (a backup that you can easily deploy/run somewhere else to test if it's working) sounds very attractive.

Reading around, however, tells me that some of you recommend running the Nextcloud docker (instead of a VM).

My questions:

What would be the advantage of running Nextcloud as a docker, instead of within a VM?
What would be a sensible way to have an incremental/differential backup of the VM/Docker?
The storage usage of my Nextcloud instance exceeds 1TB. If I run it within a VM, I will have to connect it to a 2TB SSD. Does it make sense to add the external storage space to the VM? How does that affect the ease of backing the full VM up? Or (as I have read here and there) should I simply put the entire VM on the external SSD?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[-] PriorProject@lemmy.world 10 points 1 year ago

Docker is a powerful tool to increase confidence in your backups.

In a VM, the way you figure out which files to backup is to read the docs. If they're wrong or you misread them, the only way you'll find out is by doing a full restore test... which is often painful and complex in home setups.
In docker, the filesystem outside volumes is destroyed between every container restart. If your volume setup is insufficient, you'll repeatedly lose state during your initial installation process between container restarts. You'll continually test your state management throughout the lifetime of the service during restarts. This leaves a much smaller window for backup mistakes.

The tradeoff with docker is that the networking is complex (well, everything is complex... but the networking is where it often hurts). But if you're able to deal with that one-time pain, it's superior almost all the time for home setups. I think the only things I run outside docker are ssh and netdata. SSH because it's stateless and works perfectly out of the box, and netdata because it wants permissions to everything... and is functionally stateless for me because I don't care if I drop my observability data.

this post was submitted on 09 Aug 2023

28 points (96.7% liked)

Selfhosted

39264 readers

196 users here now

A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.

Rules:

Be civil: we're here to support and learn from one another. Insults won't be tolerated. Flame wars are frowned upon.
No spam posting.
Posts have to be centered around self-hosting. There are other communities for discussing hardware or home computing. If it's not obvious why your post topic revolves around selfhosting, please include details to make it clear.
Don't duplicate the full text of your blog or github here. Just post the link for folks to click.
Submission headline should match the article title (don’t cherry-pick information from the title to fit your agenda).
No trolling.

Resources:

Any issues on the community? Report it using the report flag.

Questions? DM the mods!

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

HybridSarcasm@lemmy.world

HybridSarcasm@lemmy.hybridsarcasm.xyz