About Nextcloud Global Scale¶

A Nextcloud Global Scale setup is a cluster of multiple independent Nextcloud instances (instances, not servers), with a central authentication, where each user gets assigned to one instance, and yet is able to share and collaborate with every user from the Global Scale setup. It appears to the end-users as if it were existing only one single instance.

The Nextcloud Global Scale setup is a technical solution that can address multiple issues faced by single instances:

• when the amount of users is too big for a single instance, Global Scale allows to distribute the users, hence the load, to multiple instances.
• when there is an interest of locating the data close to the users and that users are spread across the world (hence, with bandwidth and latency issues)

Real-life use case examples¶

• education sector: providing drive and office features to 1.2M users. Each Nextcloud instance hosts 30k users. News users are assigned to the latest opened instance. When an instance is full, a new one is opened.
• research sector: providing drive and office features to 40 research institutes and universities. Locate the data as close as possible from the users (researchers). Decentralize storage management to universities and research centers. Users are assigned to the instance of their university or research institute.
• global media company: working across the globe with heavy media content, where locating the data as close as possible to the employees is key to ensure fast access to the data and avoid any latency or bandwidth related hurdles, while allowing seamless collaboration between employees from all locations.

Nextcloud Global Scale main components¶

A Nextcloud Global Scale setup relies on a few parts: