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!
hendrik@palaver.p3x.de 3 hours ago
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.
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.
lka1988@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 hours ago
The “old laptop” method is only feasible when it’s a personal service. You don’t want people (non-techie adults in leadership positions, especially) expecting AWS/MS/Google level of availability only for them to find out that a busted laptop (using “average people” terms) is the only thing that’s keeping their data in place. It’s not a good solution for a non-familial organization.
hendrik@palaver.p3x.de 2 hours ago
Idk. Really depends on what you put there. And Nextcloud does file sync. Even if the server coughs up and becomes unavailable, you'd still have your directories and calendar on your devices. And creativity and problem-solving are core scout skills, so I guess bulding that thing for no money would be an interesting exercise in that. Though you're right. At some point you'll have to think about maintainability and reliability. I guess that wouldn't stop me from starting the project, but everyone has to decide for themselves.
BennyTheExplorer@lemmy.world 3 hours ago
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.
AbidanYre@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
How is the other group doing it? Could you leverage any of what they’re using?
possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 1 hour ago
Could you pay them to host it for you?
hendrik@palaver.p3x.de 2 hours ago
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 my old laptop idea might be promising... depending on the network situation in the building and whether you can make port forwards and all the things that need to be done.
atzanteol@sh.itjust.works 2 hours ago
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.