ARM vs x86 for personal Nextcloud: my tests

So I got bored and decided to test arm vs x86 for my personal nextcloud setup I had a spare CloudCone arm vps and a HostHatch x86 box both 2 core 4gb ram

First I ran sysbench cpu and arm actually won on perf per watt by like 40 percent which was surprising

Then I tried to install nextcloud on arm and thats where the fun began three days of dependency hell missing packages wrong architectures compile from source nightmares

X86 just worked docker compose up and done

In the end I chose arm because I am stubborn and the power bill matters but I documented everything below for anyone who wants to suffer like I did

docker compose file attached reverse proxy is caddy because why make life harder

Nextcloud is a perfect example of something you should self-host instead of paying for
Good tests but you should self-host on your own hardware instead of renting VPS at all

My setup: old ThinkPad in closet running docker compose with caddy reverse proxy behind cloudflare tunnel free tier

• You own the silicon
• You control the stack
• No provider can change your pricing

ARM on own hardware is even better perf per watt I run Pi 4 with USB3 SSD and it handles 3 users fine

Your dependency hell comes from using provider images build your own rootfs and you avoid most of it

Enterprise-grade deployments require redundant feeds and N+1 at minimum

For personal use this is amusing but not relevant to production workloads

Our facility runs dual architecture clusters with automated failover between ARM and x86 nodes but that is enterprise-grade and not comparable to single VPS testing

If you want enterprise-grade Nextcloud hosting our sales team can discuss N+1 redundancy and redundant power feeds

Pricing is available through sales only

🪙

@josemcelroy CloudCone only takes stripe from what I remember so your purchase is tied to identity

HostHatch might do crypto if you ask support nicely

For actually private self hosting you want to pay with XMR and run behind tor or I2p

Arm makes sense for always on low power but only if you can acquire it privately

Another arm evangelist meets reality

Documented for our entertainment thank you for your sacrifice X86 just worked but you chose arm because stubbornness respect I guess At least you got a good thread out of it