Setting up Nextcloud with S3-compatible primary storage

Nextcloud stores your files on the same disk as the installation by default. That works fine until your disk fills up. A better approach is to point Nextcloud at an S3-compatible storage backend from the start.

One important thing to note: this only works for brand new installations. If you already have a Nextcloud server running, you will need to back up your data first and import it into the new installation afterward.

The config

Add this block to your config.php file:

'objectstore' => array(
    'class' => '\\OC\\Files\\ObjectStore\\S3',
    'arguments' => array(
        'bucket' => 'nextcloud-data',
        'autocreate' => true,
        'key'    => 'my-key',
        'secret' => 'my-secret',
        'hostname' => 'https://{my-domain}',
        'port' => 443,
        'use_ssl' => true,
        'region' => '',
        'use_path_style' => true
    ),
),

What these values mean

Most of it is self-explanatory, but a few things are worth calling out:

autocreate tells Nextcloud to create the bucket named "nextcloud-data" if it does not already exist. Handy for a fresh setup.

region needs to be included even if you leave it empty. Without it, Nextcloud throws errors. I spent more time debugging that than I'd like to admit.

use_path_style controls how the bucket name appears in the URL. When set to true, you get s3.amazonaws.com/[bucket_name] instead of [bucket_name].s3.amazonaws.com. If your provider uses the subdomain style, set this to false.

That's it

Once you have the config in place, Nextcloud will use your S3-compatible storage as the primary backend. All file uploads go straight to the bucket. It is a simple change that saves you from running into disk space issues down the road.

Sources

• Nextcloud Admin Manual: Primary Storage