Deploy the Latest Version of the Nextcloud with Just Two Commands

Nextcloud is one of the most popular on-prem cloud platforms on the market. Recently, the project team released Nextcloud Hub 6, which includes a built-in artificial intelligence solution, which (according to the developers) is a local-only AI tool.

For those who believe Nextcloud is too challenging (or time-consuming) to install, you’re in luck, as the developers have created an All-In-One solution that makes deploying Nextcloud incredibly simple. With this particular option, you could deploy Nextcloud for every department in your business and not break a sweat.

So, if having the ability to deploy a full-on cloud solution for your home or business in minutes sounds like an appealing option, read on.

For those who still aren’t sold on Nextcloud, consider this. With Nextcloud you can enjoy features (available within your LAN) such as:

• Storage and real-time collaboration for documents, photos, videos, audio, and more.
• Local and/or server-side search.
• Calendars.
• Audio and video chats.
• Push notifications.
• Media streaming.
• File sharing.
• File comments.
• End-to-end encryption.
• Fingerprint locking.
• File/folder monitoring.
• And much more.

You can think of Nextcloud as an on-prem replacement for Google Workspace.

It really is that good.

Even better, the installation of Nextcloud has been made incredibly simple with the All-In-One Docker image.

Let’s see how this is done.

What You’ll Need

I’m going to demonstrate this on Ubuntu Server 22.04 but you can use any Linux distribution that supports Docker. Besides a running instance of Linux, you’ll also need a user with sudo privilege. For AIO to function properly, you’ll also need a valid domain and certificate.

That’s it. Roll up your sleeves and flex your fingers, it’s time to type (or copy/paste).

Install Docker

There’s a very simple way to install Docker. Now, normally, I much prefer going through the manual steps for installing Docker (I’ll outline in a moment). But in the spirit of getting Nextcloud up and running very quickly, let’s run a handy script that will take care of the installation for you.

Log into your Linux server and install Docker with the following command:

curl -fsSL https://get.docker.com | sudo sh

The above command will take a few minutes to complete. When it finishes, it will return your prompt, at which point you’ll want to add your user to the docker group with:

sudo usermod -aG docker $USER

Log out and log back in for the changes to take effect.

If you’re like me, you might want to handle the installation of Docker manually. To do that, issue the following commands:

Log out and log back in so the changes take effect.

Now that Docker is installed, it’s time to deploy the Nextcloud All-In-One solution.

Deploying Nextcloud AIO

Back at your terminal window, you can install the Nextcloud AIO solution with the following command:

docker run -d --init --sig-proxy=false --name nextcloud-aio-mastercontainer --restart always --publish 80:80 --publish 8080:8080 --publish 8443:8443 --volume nextcloud_aio_mastercontainer:/mnt/docker-aio-config --volume /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock:ro nextcloud/all-in-one:latest

If you’d rather have the command broken down, line by line (so it’s easier to examine), it would look like this:

docker run -d \
--init \
--sig-proxy=false \
--name nextcloud-aio-mastercontainer \
--restart always \
--publish 80:80 \
--publish 8080:8080 \
--publish 8443:8443 \
--volume nextcloud_aio_mastercontainer:/mnt/docker-aio-config \
--volume /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock:ro \
nextcloud/all-in-one:latest

When this command finishes, open a web browser that’s connected to the same network and point it to https://SERVER:8080 (where SERVER is the IP address of the hosting server). You’ll be greeted by the AIO setup wizard (Figure 1), which includes a password that you might want to copy (as you’ll need it).

Click Open Nextcloud AIO login and, when prompted (Figure 2), type the password that was generated for you.

Once you’ve reached this point, you must type your domain in the New AIO Instance section, and click Submit Domain (Figure 3).

You’ll also need to open the following ports in your firewall for Nextcloud AIO to function properly:

• 80
• 8080
• 443
• 8443
• 3478 (TCP/UDP)

With all of that taken care of, you should find yourself with a full-blown cloud solution that can help make your organization more productive and collaborative.