I like immich a lot, and have run it for years now. Unfortunately I don't have as much time as I'd like anymore, and the sheer number of breaking changes and architecture redesigns really fatigued...
I like immich a lot, and have run it for years now. Unfortunately I don't have as much time as I'd like anymore, and the sheer number of breaking changes and architecture redesigns really fatigued me. It's the one app I have that's publicly exposed, so not updating it immediately isn't an option from a security standpoint, but that usually resulted me in spending an hour I don't have rewriting docker compose files. As a result, it's been down for a few months for me, probably needing a database rebuild, which I don't know if I'll ever get around to.
I'd advise that for anyone looking to migrate from a SaaS solution like Google photos, make sure you have the time and will to keep up with system maintenance tasks for as long as you plan on running it.
This is why I haven't yet tried Immich. I'm essentially waiting for them to release stable versions, their roadmap says "early 2025" so hopefully that happens soon.
This is why I haven't yet tried Immich. I'm essentially waiting for them to release stable versions, their roadmap says "early 2025" so hopefully that happens soon.
Hey, good point! Around the time I started it, it did have a lot of breaking changes to watch over. These days, I think most of them were some minor changes to the Docker compose, which mostly...
Hey, good point! Around the time I started it, it did have a lot of breaking changes to watch over.
These days, I think most of them were some minor changes to the Docker compose, which mostly worked for me.
Hey there, I've been using Immich for quite some time and stuck with it. I decided to finally what I love about it in case some self-hosters want to know a first-hand review of its features before...
Hey there, I've been using Immich for quite some time and stuck with it. I decided to finally what I love about it in case some self-hosters want to know a first-hand review of its features before diving in.
Nice that you found a setup that works for you! I admittedly haven't used NextCloud in a while. I haven't come back since I don't have a need for the whole suite of apps at the moment. How do you...
Nice that you found a setup that works for you!
I admittedly haven't used NextCloud in a while. I haven't come back since I don't have a need for the whole suite of apps at the moment.
How do you do the auto-upload? Via the Nextcloud app or something?
Your setup sounds absolutely amazing, honestly. Can I ask what is your monthly cost of VPS hosting (and if it's really cheap, I'd love a name drop). I've been running on local hardware in my house...
Your setup sounds absolutely amazing, honestly. Can I ask what is your monthly cost of VPS hosting (and if it's really cheap, I'd love a name drop). I've been running on local hardware in my house for something like 20 years now, with spinning disks for data that only get changed out when they fill up or fail. My only backups are Google Drive (which I don't use for photos due to cost), and the original phones the images are copied from. Needless to say, I will lose significant data if when my drives fail. Part of me will enjoy the process of rebuilding my server from scratch; I'll probably take the opportunity to move to Proxmox, use encryption on my drives, maybe encrypted boot loader and usb keys. etc. But right now, it's all a set of patchwork nonsense built on a rolling release distro that was first set up decades ago, to the point that I'd either have to build a new server or have significant downtime to make the switch.
I personally switched from NextCloud to Immich at little over a year ago and I haven't looked back. I run Arch, and NextCloud broke frequently for me, even with updating weekly. It was almost always easy to fix, but a few times it required physical access which was pretty inconvenient for me, sometimes I would like to run updates remotely while I was at the office. Facial recognition and the maps plugin would just stop working on me randomly. I'd have to fight with installing plugins from AUR or downloading from the web. It must my older age, but I finally see the benefit of Debian Stable, and only updating for security issues.
If you install Immich in docker it will probably run facial recognition out of the box. If your VPS has CUDA or hardware acceleration support, Immich will run it very quickly, too. There's tons of details out there about upgrading the facial recognition to a better model, but I've never bothered personally, because I'm lazy and it works for me as it. If you have a home server with CUDA, a modern Intel iGPU or are able to invest in a cheap nVidia Tesla card, maybe you could set something up using the VPS for actual data but processing in on your home server. For what it's worth I run all of this on an Intel i5-6400 with 16 GB of RAM, and I regularly give 4 GB to a virtual machine. Instead of upgrading the motherboard/CPU I bought a Tesla P4 to handle transcoding, so I can now use my system to browse Tildes, transcode 4k video on the fly, run a 4GB VM with Debian all at the same time. None of this software is nearly as hungry as you would expect.
Hetzner sells managed Nextcloud instances for cheap. You don’t have to install or update it, they do it for you. https://www.hetzner.com/storage/storage-share/ I used it for some time, it’s...
if it's really cheap, I'd love a name drop
Hetzner sells managed Nextcloud instances for cheap. You don’t have to install or update it, they do it for you.
Oh! Sad to hear that it doesn't work. I only shoot with my smartphone (for now) and that seems to work well. Seems like it's really it's not very much for professional photographers.
Oh! Sad to hear that it doesn't work.
I only shoot with my smartphone (for now) and that seems to work well.
Seems like it's really it's not very much for professional photographers.
I like immich a lot, and have run it for years now. Unfortunately I don't have as much time as I'd like anymore, and the sheer number of breaking changes and architecture redesigns really fatigued me. It's the one app I have that's publicly exposed, so not updating it immediately isn't an option from a security standpoint, but that usually resulted me in spending an hour I don't have rewriting docker compose files. As a result, it's been down for a few months for me, probably needing a database rebuild, which I don't know if I'll ever get around to.
I'd advise that for anyone looking to migrate from a SaaS solution like Google photos, make sure you have the time and will to keep up with system maintenance tasks for as long as you plan on running it.
This is why I haven't yet tried Immich. I'm essentially waiting for them to release stable versions, their roadmap says "early 2025" so hopefully that happens soon.
Hey, good point! Around the time I started it, it did have a lot of breaking changes to watch over.
These days, I think most of them were some minor changes to the Docker compose, which mostly worked for me.
I agree though that YMMV.
Hey there, I've been using Immich for quite some time and stuck with it. I decided to finally what I love about it in case some self-hosters want to know a first-hand review of its features before diving in.
Nice that you found a setup that works for you!
I admittedly haven't used NextCloud in a while. I haven't come back since I don't have a need for the whole suite of apps at the moment.
How do you do the auto-upload? Via the Nextcloud app or something?
Your setup sounds absolutely amazing, honestly. Can I ask what is your monthly cost of VPS hosting (and if it's really cheap, I'd love a name drop). I've been running on local hardware in my house for something like 20 years now, with spinning disks for data that only get changed out when they fill up or fail. My only backups are Google Drive (which I don't use for photos due to cost), and the original phones the images are copied from. Needless to say, I will lose significant data
ifwhen my drives fail. Part of me will enjoy the process of rebuilding my server from scratch; I'll probably take the opportunity to move to Proxmox, use encryption on my drives, maybe encrypted boot loader and usb keys. etc. But right now, it's all a set of patchwork nonsense built on a rolling release distro that was first set up decades ago, to the point that I'd either have to build a new server or have significant downtime to make the switch.I personally switched from NextCloud to Immich at little over a year ago and I haven't looked back. I run Arch, and NextCloud broke frequently for me, even with updating weekly. It was almost always easy to fix, but a few times it required physical access which was pretty inconvenient for me, sometimes I would like to run updates remotely while I was at the office. Facial recognition and the maps plugin would just stop working on me randomly. I'd have to fight with installing plugins from AUR or downloading from the web. It must my older age, but I finally see the benefit of Debian Stable, and only updating for security issues.
If you install Immich in docker it will probably run facial recognition out of the box. If your VPS has CUDA or hardware acceleration support, Immich will run it very quickly, too. There's tons of details out there about upgrading the facial recognition to a better model, but I've never bothered personally, because I'm lazy and it works for me as it. If you have a home server with CUDA, a modern Intel iGPU or are able to invest in a cheap nVidia Tesla card, maybe you could set something up using the VPS for actual data but processing in on your home server. For what it's worth I run all of this on an Intel i5-6400 with 16 GB of RAM, and I regularly give 4 GB to a virtual machine. Instead of upgrading the motherboard/CPU I bought a Tesla P4 to handle transcoding, so I can now use my system to browse Tildes, transcode 4k video on the fly, run a 4GB VM with Debian all at the same time. None of this software is nearly as hungry as you would expect.
Hetzner sells managed Nextcloud instances for cheap. You don’t have to install or update it, they do it for you.
https://www.hetzner.com/storage/storage-share/
I used it for some time, it’s convenient. I stopped only because I wasn’t happy with the Nextcloud iOS app, nothing to do with Hetzner.
I’ve tried Immich, but they don’t seem to handle raw formats at all, which is table stakes for me at least.
Oh! Sad to hear that it doesn't work.
I only shoot with my smartphone (for now) and that seems to work well.
Seems like it's really it's not very much for professional photographers.