Minimal server performance

Hello everybody, I just landed here and, as I’m learning about Mail-in-a-Box, I’m already loving it for its simplicity and usefulness. Unfortunately, I found out that

Mail-in-a-Box must be installed on a fresh machine that will be dedicated to Mail-in-a-Box

thus I can’t self-host it on my server, which now has both Jitsi Meet and Nextcloud installed, and I need them!

My best option, then, is to configure a standalone separate mailserver and share its cost with my friends. The main question is this, though: which are the minimum hardware requirements and how do they grow in proportion to the users/domain/accounts used on the same server?

On the setup guide page I only found this info:

You must choose the Ubuntu 18.04 x64 (server edition) operating system and a machine with at least 512 MB of RAM. This setup currently costs around $5/month, depending on which provider you choose. We recommend you to use a box with 1 GB of RAM which costs around $10/month.

Do I need a larger server if there will be ~10/15 different users using one account each?

I’ll use Contabo for hosting the server, and I’m gonna choose among these options. Which one do you suggest me?

Thanks a lot in advance!

Best regards,
Tommi

Based only on my own experience, the lowest tier of your provider looks adequate.

I’m using Digital Ocean 1GB memory + 25GB storage tier. I have half a dozen users, 5 domains (with static websites) and I’m using the NextCloud WebDAV server for file storage and access. No problems after 3 months with this set up.

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Wait a second,

You’re telling me that you have Nextcloud installed on the same instance ad Mail-in-a-Box? Or else, what do you mean?

Thanks a lot for the advice, anyways!

Yes. MIAB includes NextCloud 17 to provide address book and calendar functionality. NextCloud file storage is also available in this configuration and therefore includes WebDAV access.

As I understand it, using NextCloud beyond address and calendar is not recommended but for me works. I currently have about 750MB of files there syncing between macOS and iOS applications. Three months experience without problems.

By the way, MIAB uses about 12GB of storage. NextCloud shows 12GB free for use (my VPS has 25GB storage in total)

Be careful of backups though. My applications use WebDAV as a sync store so I don’t need to back up. Otherwise, use Cyberduck, rsync, or similar to backup the files.

No, the OS and the MiaB install are MAYBE 3 gb of the total disk space … the 12gb likely includes your files (including NextCloud).

Ah yes. Install around 3GB is right. I forgot I also have 4GB+ of mail as well as the MIAB on box backup files. Sorry for any confusion.

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