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:

  1. What would be the advantage of running Nextcloud as a docker, instead of within a VM?
  2. What would be a sensible way to have an incremental/differential backup of the VM/Docker?
  3. 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?
  • fraydabson@sopuli.xyzEnglish
    91·
    1 year ago

    From my experience docker seems to be best for me. I’m also no expert in any of this.

    What I do is run the container in docker and then I user rsync to backup my files to both a secondary hard drive and off site storage with a backup provider.

    I haven’t looked into database backups yet. Just files.

    • partizan@lemm.eeEnglish
      10·
      1 year ago
      docker exec nextcloud-mariadb-1 /usr/bin/mariadb-dump --defaults-extra-file=/backup/.mylogin.cnf -u root --single-transaction --quick --all-databases |gzip > /mnt/mysql/backup/nc${NUM}_dump.gz

      You are welcome

      • pe1uca@lemmy.pe1uca.devEnglish
        0·
        1 year ago

        What would be the difference between this and creating a volume to the data directory and backing up that one?
        I mean, is it not recommended? Is there a potential to backup in the middle of a DB transaction which would make the backup useless?

        • partizan@lemm.eeEnglish
          1·
          1 year ago

          Exactly, you can end up with inconsistent DB state. Only possible filesystem level solution is take a LVM/btrfs/zfs snapshot and copy the DB files from there, but at that point, the dump is much easier and more convenient.

  • rambos@lemm.eeEnglish
    4·
    1 year ago

    Im running nextcloud in docker from lsio atm. Doing daily file backups, so not database, mostly because it seems its pain to test backups, but also dont rly need anything else (at least not for now).

    There is also a community !nextcloud@lemmy.world

    First time I hear about running nextcloud in VM. Following to learn more.

  • noneabove1182@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    2·
    1 year ago

    I have the snap installed, for what it’s worth it’s pretty painless AS LONG AS YOU DON’T WANT TO DO ANYTHING SILLY

    I’ve found it nearly impossible to alter the base behaviour and have it not entirely break, so if nextcloud out of the box does exactly what you want, go ahead and install it via snap…

    I predict that on docker you’re going to have a bad time if you can’t give it host network mode and try to just forward ports

    That said, docker >>>> VM in my books

  • Swiggles@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    If you can use containers always use containers as a rule of thumb. VMs are less efficient in almost every way and they add some unnecessary complexity.

    For docker you basically only have to backup the persistent data. So in case of the docker setup you just have to backup the mounts and probably your compose file you are using. This probably also answers your third question already. Container files can be left alone and don’t need to be considered for backups as they should be stateless and can reside in their default location (/var/lib/docker/overlay2 or so by default).

    Overall it is quite simple as you only really have to consider the mounts and the docker setup. The mounts you define and should be really obvious and the docker setup is just a few config files at most or just the compose file.

  • Muehe@kbin.social
    1·
    1 year ago

    1. What would be the advantage of running Nextcloud as a docker, instead of within a VM?

      • No idea really beyond the usual VM/container trade-offs, I guess it would allow you to use orchestration tools and similar for Docker.

    2. What would be a sensible way to have an incremental/differential backup of the VM/Docker?

      • If you use Proxmox as your hypervisor it comes with a sophisticated backup solution, probably the same for ESXi or whatever. Not sure about Docker.

    3. 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? […]

      • That’s what I would do at least. Connecting external storage space to a VM/container is relatively trivial and Nextcloud recommends to separate binaries and data directory anyway. Plus this allows you to use different backup strategies for data versus binaries+metadata.

    In case you haven’t yet, I’d also recommend taking a look at this: https://github.com/nextcloud/vm

    It’s basically a collection of three shell scripts to install, manage, and update Nextcloud. Last time I tried it also worked on LXC/LXD, not only VMs. It would probably work on Docker as well and has some files related to that in the migrate/docker directory.

  • maggio@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    My friend and I run most things in kubernetes (k3s), and then we use longhorn to backup volumes, which then can be re-used if your cluster crashes. Here’s a blog post describing the process (although not for nextcloud specifically, it could be applied to Nextcloud as well, as we do this for nextcloud as well)

    Octopusx blog: Backup and Restore

  • Decronym@lemmy.decronym.xyzBEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:

    Fewer Letters More Letters
    HTTP Hypertext Transfer Protocol, the Web
    HTTPS HTTP over SSL
    SSH Secure Shell for remote terminal access
    SSL Secure Sockets Layer, for transparent encryption

    2 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 7 acronyms.

    [Thread #34 for this sub, first seen 13th Aug 2023, 08:55] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]