Global Scale removes the major limitations a Nextcloud instance has at large scale: database and storage. As a PHP application, Nextcloud handles each ‘request’ to the server as an independent process, scaling essentially without limitations: if you need to handle twice the number of users logging in simultaneously, you just double your processing power by adding, for example, a second server. Double again? Go to four, ten, how many you need.<\/p>\n

However, each of these Nextcloud application servers will have to talk to the same database and storage, and that is where the problems begin. At large scale, these become expensive, as scaling databases and storage isn’t anywhere near as easy as scaling Nextcloud. At even larger scale, even a data center can become a limitation: the connection to the internet backbone can only handle so much, after all!<\/p>\n

Global Scale solves these issues in an elegant way by distributing users and data over separate, independent Nextcloud nodes. These are then ‘wired together’ with a number of mediating services, to facilitate authentication, sharing and more. The benefits go beyond scalability: it can also allow you to keep data closer to users to improve performance or keep data in specific countries to comply with local regulations.<\/p>\n

Watch this youtube video to get a graphical overview of how Global Scale works.
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