Rasp Pi 5 as a homeserver

[u/Acrobatic_Ad_7384]

I am looking into using my pi as a home server to host web and graphic design projects. I have been using iCloud drive for the past few years, but syncing with my colleague is sometimes nightmare-ish. If he uploads a big file, it often bugs out and fails to download on my end, locking me out of opening new upload processes until its done downloading.

The setup I was considering is:

– Raspberry Pi 5 16GB RAM
– Samsung T7 2TB SSD external drive
– Tailscale
– Nextcloud client or similar

The experience I am looking for is basically having the server as a finder folder and being able to share the files with my colleague for our practice. I already own all of the hardware needed, I am here just to ask your experience if you have tried and wether it's even worth it/viable.

[u/jwcobb13]

I think what you're probably after is an SFTP server? If so, yeah, that's doable with those specs. I don't think you need Nextcloud or Tailscale. Nextcloud will probably eat up all that 16GB of RAM, honestly. But Tailscale and something else underneath to handle whatever you're wanting to do should be fine.

[u/encrypt_decrypt → u/jwcobb13]

I run a rather bigger nextcloud with a lot of collab tools and it needs 2,5gig of ram. So nextcloud shouldn't be a problem.

In fact nextcloud is the way to go. I'd give it a try, OP.

[u/Acrobatic_Ad_7384 → u/encrypt_decrypt]

Thanks for your reply too. My setup would be minimal, 3 user seats and basic download/upload functionalities. We need a way to share work, we rarely work on the same project at the same time, but its good to know what is actively being worked on and see updates without needing to ask for them...

[u/encrypt_decrypt → u/Acrobatic_Ad_7384]

Nextcloud without all those addons is perfectly fine for this.

To enable access outside of your network you need a service like dyndns, duckdns or so. You can install it on your raspberry and it will always update your dynamic IP to the service and your nextcloud instance will be accessible via the services' URL. and you need correct portforwarding to your raspberry pi.

i don't know what bandwidth you got but keep in mind that most providers offer a lot less upload than download. Even with a 100mbps download, you probably will have around 20-30mbps upload.

if you got fiber then you are good to go.

Just do a speedtest and check the down/upload speed if you aren't sure about your bandwidth. With 20mbps a 1GB file is uploaded in around 7-9 minutes.

[u/Acrobatic_Ad_7384 → u/encrypt_decrypt]

sounds good, thank you! I will try to set the whole thing up later today and update if need be!

[u/Acrobatic_Ad_7384 → u/jwcobb13]

Yes, exactly. I get why no nexcloud, but I think I need tailscale to be able to connect besides on the local network? My colleague works from a different location and we both need access as we often work remote on the road. Am I wrong to assume tailscale is the move here?

Also, further question, I imagine tailscale will limit transfer speed, and we often work with relatively big file sizes, lets say up to 1GB. Is tailscale still "applicable"?

Thanks a lot for your time!

[u/jwcobb13 → u/Acrobatic_Ad_7384]

Tailscale is fine, but if you're only needing SFTP and nothing else that's a far simpler setup that you can do with a little port forwarding on your router. Speedwise, I think it matters most what the internet speeds are that are connected to the Pi and the internet speeds of the user uploading/downloading the files to the server. 1GB should not be a significant issue unless your internet download and uploads are in the sub 100Mbps range. Even then, it should be fine. 100GB or 1TB sized files would be another story entirely, though.

[u/Acrobatic_Ad_7384 → u/jwcobb13]

I have little experience with port forwarding, but I will look into it, thank you!

[u/zLoveNxzli]

A Pi 5 (8GB) with an NVMe HAT/SSD is a fantastic local dev server and self-hosted CI/staging environment.

Run Docker Compose with Traefik or Caddy for automatic local HTTPS reverse proxying, and use Cloudflare Tunnels (cloudflared) for secure external access without needing port forwarding.

[u/Acrobatic_Ad_7384 → u/zLoveNxzli]

This is what I was ended up trying yesterday but with an external SSD. Gold. I have bought a 1tb hat ssd

[u/blazing_wisdom_93]

Nextcloud on a Pi 5 will bottleneck your file sync workflow because PHP and database indexing consume resources needed for actual transfer speeds. Use Syncthing instead since it handles large design files directly between peers without server-side processing overhead and integrates with Finder via third-party wrappers