I have my own home-server and it’s not really a problem maintaining it as I’ve been through a steep learning curve. Now I have a friend who has an ancient Synology and it is always causing terrible problems for him.
If I were to set up a little server for him with docker services running things like immich and syncthing etc, would this be set and forget enough to not cause problems for him? Ideally he wants his own cloud so relatives can store and share files, photos, and possibly movies too. He isn’t the most tech savvy, but he knows his way around Windows and PC’s generally. He doesn’t live that close so I can’t be at his if anything went a little pear-shaped. I could however ssh into it at least.
Is this feasible or practicable? Or would he have to learn Linux and Docker et al.?
I would do the ethical thing and explain the privacy implications of you hosting it but him hosting it too. Honestly I’d turn on end to end encryption.
You having their data and him having his family’s data is a big responsibility. You need adequate security both online and physically.
There’s also the fact that he has access to it if he’s an admin. Not everyone can handle that responsibility.
As to your original question, Nextcloud breaks often, relative to how often the server will have problems. You’d def need SSH access.
It would probably be better for you to get an ASUSTOR NAS in terms of hardware. It Supports apps and Nextcloud is one of them.
It also has support other than you, which depending on a few factors (magic 8 ball), might be more time consuming than you’d think. They may not want to deal with hardware either if something did occur.