So I have a NUC with Proxmox as the primary OS and OPNsense in a VM for my home network. I've been trying to move away from Google services but would still like to use them as a back up solution. Would it make sense to use Nextcloud in a VM as a replacement and use Rclone to encrypt and backup my files to Google Drive? Or should I use a NAS OS like Open Media Vault instead?
I'll also mention that I have an empty SSD that I can passthrough and that my primary draw to Nextcloud is that they have a Windows desktop syncing app like Google Drive does which makes things familiar and convenient. I don't plan on having my Nextcloud instance exposed to the web but might setup a Wireguard tunnel into the local network in the future.
I ultimately did go with Syncthing and uploading my files encrypted to Google Drive for backup. It's been working great for months. I've also been using Zeroteir to make this work with my laptop too while on the go.
Try Resilio Sync. Running it for 5+ years now and did not have a single synchronization issue. Syncing around 5 devices flawlessly, instantly and error free (not sponsored)
You could also consider a lesser known product, Duplicati. It creates encrypted 50MB chunks of data and maintains a database of what's in it. Have those chunks in Google Drive, and you have your encrypted backups in the cloud.
Duplicati looks very promising, but from a cursory glance it's more for backups? Since the files are split into chunks, I would still need to use a NAS or local cloud storage and have Duplicati do the final upload to GDrive.