Managed Nextcloud hosting

Collaboration and identityOn-prem or your region

Files, calendars and shared documents for the whole organisation, on storage you can point at in a room you control. Pilae runs it on your own servers, or in Zurich, Switzerland, and eleven other Pilae Cloud regions.

Talk to us about Nextcloud

Licence: AGPL-3.0
Runs on: Your own hardware, or any of 10+ Pilae regions — six of them in Switzerland and the EU
Upgrades: Pinned, tested against your configuration, applied in your window
Upstream: nextcloud.com

Running Nextcloud in production: what it takes

Pin and deploy
A version we have run, with S3 primary storage from the first day, application and database separated, Redis in front of the locking.
Put it behind your identity provider
Sign-on through Keycloak or your existing IdP, so accounts arrive from the directory and a leaver actually loses access to the files.
Add document editing
Collabora alongside it where people need to edit in the browser. It is a second service with its own memory appetite, and it is sized deliberately rather than discovered during the rollout.
Back up both halves
We back up the database and the object store at the same moment, because a Nextcloud restore needs both. Once a month we restore the pair into a scratch environment and open a file from it.
Upgrade in steps, in your window
Nextcloud will not skip major versions, so upgrades are a sequence. We run the sequence in staging against a copy of your data, then apply it in your window.

What Nextcloud is, and who runs it

Nextcloud is a file server with a web interface, sync clients and the surrounding pieces an organisation actually needs: shared folders, external share links, versioning, calendars and contacts, and in-browser document editing when you add Collabora beside it.

It is the closest open-source equivalent to Google Drive or a SharePoint document library, and it is usually chosen for one reason: the files sit on storage you name. For an organisation whose answer to “where are our documents” has to be a jurisdiction rather than a vendor, that is the whole argument.

The project is mature and the surface is wide, which cuts both ways. Almost anything you need exists as an app, and almost anything you install becomes part of your upgrade path. Nextcloud will not skip major versions, so falling three releases behind turns a routine patch into a sequence of migrations, each with its own database step.

The failure modes are well known and all avoidable. File locking without Redis corrupts concurrent edits. Local disk as primary storage makes the deployment ungrowable and the backup enormous. Backing up the database without the object store, or the other way around, produces two halves that cannot be restored into one system.

We deploy it with object storage and Redis from the start, put it behind your identity provider, back up both halves at the same moment, and restore them into a scratch environment once a month to check that what we have is a recovery and not a pile of files.

Nextcloud system requirements

Before anything is deployed, this is what has to exist. We size it with you in the first session, and we say so when your own hardware is already enough.

CPU and memory: 4 vCPU · 8 GBSized for a few hundred users. Document editing wants the headroom, not file storage.
Database: PostgreSQLMySQL works. Postgres is what we run and what the restore drill is written against.
Object storage: S3-compatible bucketAs primary storage, from the first day. Retrofitting it later means moving every file twice.
Cache: RedisFile locking and sessions. Not optional past one application node: without it, concurrent edits corrupt.
DNS and TLS: 1 hostnamePlus an SMTP relay for share notifications. Certificate issuance and renewal are automated end to end.
Document editing: Collabora, licensed separatelyIn-browser editing of Office formats is a separate product with a per-user subscription. The free development edition is not supported for production. We price it with you before you commit, or leave it out and keep desktop editing.

Migrating from Google Drive to Nextcloud

The files are the easy half. Nextcloud's own migration tools pull a Google Drive or OneDrive tree across, and for anything large we ship the bulk copy over a server-side transfer rather than through somebody's laptop. What takes the time is the sharing: links people have sent to customers, permissions inherited three folders deep, and the documents that are only ever opened from a Teams channel. We map that before the copy starts, because a migration that moves every byte and breaks every shared link has not moved anything.

Map the shares
Who can see what today, which external links are live, and which of them have to keep working the morning after. This is the part that decides the cutover date.
Bulk copy
The tree comes across server-side, not through a desktop client. For a large estate we do a first pass early and a delta pass on the night of the switch.
Wire sign-on and desktop clients
Nextcloud goes behind your identity provider, so nobody gets a new password, and we point the desktop and mobile clients at the new host.
Re-create external links
Live share links are re-issued against the new host and the old ones left pointing somewhere that explains itself, rather than at nothing.

Where Nextcloud actually stores your files

s3://acme-nextcloud-dataprimary storage, 2.1 TB
- urn:oid:*file objects, versioned
- appdata_*/previewthumbnails, 94 GB
postgres/nextcloudmetadata, 12 GB
- oc_filecachepath to object map
- oc_sharepermissions and links
redisfile locks and sessions
s3://acme-backupsoffsite, nightly, 30 days

Metadata in Postgres, bytes in a bucket you name. The two are backed up at the same moment, because a Nextcloud restore needs both and a backup of one half is not a restore.

What Pilae is responsible for

A pinned version

A version we have run, not whatever latest resolves to that day.

A runbook

What it depends on, how it fails, what to do about it. In your repository.

A restore drill

Backups restored on a schedule. A backup nobody has restored is a file.

A patch window

Security updates in a window you agreed, with a rollback ready.

Someone watching

Every endpoint probed on the minute. An alert reaches a person, not a dashboard nobody opens.

Where it runs: zur1, fra1, fal1, gra1, ams1, hel1, lon1, ash1, hil1, sin1, tok1, syd1, on-premZurich, Frankfurt, Falkenstein, Gravelines, Amsterdam, Helsinki, London, Ashburn, Hillsboro, Singapore, Tokyo, Sydney, Your own hardware
Who holds the credentials: You do. Ours are separate, named, logged and revocable with one command. We ask before anything changes outside an agreed window.
If you leave: The machine, the data, the compose files and the runbook are already yours. Nothing stops when our access does.

What running Nextcloud costs

On Starter, Nextcloud runs in Pilae Cloud for CHF 449EUR 479USD 559 a month, hosting and onboarding included. On Business, it is one of up to three apps for CHF 1,590EUR 1,690USD 1,990 a month, on your own servers or in Pilae Cloud. Enterprise is quoted. The plans set what each includes; these are the inputs that move the price around them.

Instance size: The CPU, memory and, where a model runs, the GPUs the app needs for your users and your data.
High availability: One machine with tested restores, or a replicated setup that keeps serving when a node fails.
Storage and backups: How much data it holds, how long backups are kept, and point-in-time recovery for its database.
Plan and support: Starter, Business or Enterprise: support hours, response times in the contract and how often we review the service with you.
Region: Your own hardware, where the infrastructure is already yours, or a Pilae Cloud region, where machines are priced per month. On Starter, Pilae chooses the site.
Sign-on and integrations: Single sign-on, directory sync, mail relays and the other systems the app has to reach.

Nextcloud: common questions

Where do the files actually sit?

In an S3-compatible bucket you choose: your own storage on your own premises, or a Pilae region — Zurich, Frankfurt, Falkenstein, Gravelines, Amsterdam or Helsinki inside Switzerland and the EU. Nextcloud keeps the metadata in Postgres and the bytes in the bucket, so the answer to "where is our data" is a building you can name.

Can people still edit documents in the browser?

Yes, with Collabora running beside it, and it is the one part of this deployment that is not free: in-browser editing carries a per-user subscription with Collabora. It keeps the editing inside your perimeter rather than round-tripping a document through someone else's cloud, and we price it with you rather than letting it appear on an invoice later.

How many people can one Nextcloud deployment carry?

Storage grows with the bucket and is not the constraint. The constraint is concurrent editing and sync clients, which is why Redis and the document editor are sized before the rollout rather than during it.

What does AGPL mean for us?

Nothing, in the normal case. The AGPL attaches to whoever modifies the software and then lets other people use it over a network: they owe those users the complete source of the version being run. Running an unmodified Nextcloud for your own organisation triggers none of it. We run it unmodified — and if we ever had to patch it for you, you would get that patch and so would upstream.

If we stop working with you, do we lose the files?

No. The bucket is yours, the database is on your machine or in your account, and the compose files and runbook are in your repository. Removing our access changes nothing about who can read the data.

Back to apps

Bring us your Nextcloud. We will tell you what it takes.

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