Personal Cloud Stack

Last reviewed Oct 11, 2026 · 621 words

Treat this as two stacks that share a reverse proxy. Nextcloud and Collabora Online are tightly coupled and need careful setup together; Vaultwarden and Syncthing are independent and should stay that way. The directory's estimates put the four at about 2,816 MB of RAM combined, and Collabora alone is 2,048 MB of that, so if memory is tight, it is the piece to add last or skip.

What talks to what

Nextcloud is the hub for files, calendars and contacts. Collabora Online is a separate server that does the actual document editing; Nextcloud's office app embeds it in an iframe and the two exchange files over the WOPI protocol. That means the browser must be able to reach Collabora's public URL, Nextcloud must be able to reach it too, and Collabora must be told which Nextcloud host is allowed to use it. Most failed Collabora setups are one of those three paths not resolving the way you assumed.

Vaultwarden talks to nobody but the official Bitwarden clients. Syncthing talks peer to peer between your machines on port 22000 and never touches the server unless you add the server as a peer.

Deploy in this order

Reverse proxy and TLS first, since three of the four need HTTPS and Vaultwarden's clients refuse plain HTTP outright.

Then Nextcloud on MariaDB or Postgres rather than the SQLite default, which the catalogue flags as test-only. Add Redis caching and a background-jobs cron container before inviting anyone, and add every hostname you will use to trusted_domains in config.php. The Nextcloud performance guide covers the tuning that turns a sluggish install into a usable one.

Collabora next, once Nextcloud is stable, so you are debugging one integration at a time. Then Vaultwarden: set DOMAIN to the exact public URL or WebAuthn and attachment links break, create your account, and set SIGNUPS_ALLOWED=false immediately after. Syncthing last, on the machines that need it.

Should Syncthing and Nextcloud sync the same folder?

No. Nextcloud tracks files in its own database, so anything Syncthing writes into Nextcloud's data directory behind its back is invisible to the web UI and clients until you force a rescan with occ files:scan. Worse, two sync engines on one folder will fight over conflicts, and each can propagate the other's deletions. Use Nextcloud for files you share or reach from a browser, and Syncthing for machine-to-machine folders such as a working directory between laptop and desktop. The Nextcloud vs Syncthing comparison draws that line in more detail.

Backups are three different jobs

Nextcloud needs its database dump, its data directory and its config.php backed up together, ideally in maintenance mode. Vaultwarden needs /data, which holds the SQLite database plus attachments, every night, and the catalogue's advice to test a restore once is worth following, because this is the one backup you cannot afford to find broken. Syncthing state is cheap to rebuild; the folders it syncs belong in your normal backup scheme.

What I'd do

Deploy Vaultwarden first if passwords are your main reason for being here, since it is small, Easy-rated and independent; the Vaultwarden guide walks through it. Then build Nextcloud properly with a real database, Redis and cron, and add Collabora only once you have the RAM and a real need to edit documents in the browser. Keep Syncthing out of Nextcloud's folders.