Nextcloud Object Storage Questions

1) I am going to be storing the bulk of my files in a object bucket. Is bucket storage encrypted with the rest of the server?

Object Storage buckets live on a separate host than Linode servers, and neither buckets nor servers are encrypted at rest by default. Nextcloud's encryption doc shows how you can configure server-side encryption for objects stored in your buckets.

2) Is object storage backed up with the server?

OBJ Buckets and Linodes are entirely separate services, and although you may be using one with the other, our Backups service has no way to associate the two or perform a backup of a bucket.

3) Are the backups/snapshots encrypted?

Backups/snapshots taken with our Backups service are not encrypted at rest. A limitation of our Backups service is that it is incompatible with full disk encryption or partitioning that may prevent the service from mounting your disks.

4) If I have already made a bucket in the dashboard, is there anyway to connect that to Nextcloud? I was only able to make a new bucket from NC.

Here is the Nextcloud documentation on how to configure an existing bucket as your primary storage:

• https://docs.nextcloud.com/server/latest/admin_manual/configuration_files/primary_storage.html

You'll want to use the "Simple Storage Service (S3)" section.

5) When creating a new bucket from NC, I was unable to create one in Atlanta despite being able to create a bucket there in the dashboard.

The error message from NC will likely point to the cause for this. I'm currently able to create a bucket in ATL as well, so I'm not sure.

6) Is it possible to have a small volume attached that acts as a cache for my object bucket, or are the object buckets fast enough? Would it be best to store office files in a volume because they would need to be rewritten for every save, or would there small file size not really affect the bandwidth limits?

OBJ is best used for storing files that don't change. Objects in buckets can't be modified at the block level, and any alterations require a full rewrite of the file. If you have office files that require many rewrites, a Block Storage Volume may be a better solution. I'm not very familiar with configuring caching with Nextcloud, however their Documentation says you can use it to significantly improve performance.

6) I deployed a number of test servers. My first Nextcloud Marketplace image worked great, but all thereafter did not setup NC and the database. I have been unable to figure out why the rest did not work.

Is is possible the script was still working when you checked? I usually look in /root/ to see if the script still exists (and thus the cleanup at the end of the deployment hasn't occurred) to make sure that everything is completed before using a Marketplace deployment. Errors that occur during deployment should show in /var/log/stackscript.log.

7)I wanted to implement end to end encryption in such a way that the key does not live on the server. I was envisioning public key encryption in which after logging into NC, I would have to provide a key to access my files. Does anything like this exist?

I've never used this, but it looks like occ encryption might be what you're looking for. There is more info on the encryption doc I linked above.

8) My server is a bit slow, it can takes about 4 seconds to load a new page. I was running a Nanode 1G, but resized to dedicated 8G and it is still sluggish. I am around 750 miles from the server. Would this just be latency?

I'd recommend using a tool such as MTR and/or iperf to diagnose that sort of website sluggishness. From your description I can't be sure, but the cause could be any number of things. I did time a curl of your Linode's Nextcloud page from my local machine in Philadelphia and from a Nanode in Newark and received responses of 0.508 and 0.402 seconds respectively.