What I Learned Self-Hosting My Cloud for Two Years

Description and use

Two years of self‑hosting a cloud stack with Hetzner, Nextcloud, MinIO, and ScsDriver demonstrated stable operation, low cost, and full data control, but required 30 min/month maintenance and planning for disk expansion.

Problem

Managing personal and work data with limited storage and operational overhead while maintaining security and performance.

Outcome

Two years of stable operation with 4.3 TB of data, 30 min/month maintenance, and cost of $30/month + $5.5 lifetime for ScsDriver, cheaper than equivalent cloud for large libraries.

Workflow

• Provision Hetzner AX41-NVMe server ($30/month).
• Deploy Nextcloud 27+ via Docker.
• Set up MinIO for S3‑compatible object storage.
• Install ScsDriver on each client ($5.5 lifetime).
• Configure BorgBackup to Backblaze B2 for encrypted weekly backups.
• Mount Nextcloud + MinIO as drive letters (e.g., N:\).
• Use local cache in ScsDriver for low‑latency editing.
• Monitor disk usage with UptimeRobot + custom email script.
• Subscribe to Nextcloud release notes and update within 2 weeks.
• Test updates on staging instance before production.
• Renew TLS certificates as needed.

Evidence

This ran for 24 months with maybe 3 hours of unplanned maintenance per quarter.

Source

Personal photos / videos: 1.2 TB; Work projects: 800 GB; Backups of my laptops: 2.1 TB; Misc: 200 GB; Total: 4.3 TB

Source

I have unmetered bandwidth on Hetzner but I still feel guilty about it. In practice, egress is fine — I haven't hit a bill shock.

Source