Good start though!
Edit: and problem with micro clusters like this is always the IPv4 costs.
It lasted for about 3 years and the colocation company went bankrupt and got bought by another company, so they returned the hardware. I’m surprised a technical failure didn’t kill it.
even if they can sustain that, how the heat and energy health for that cheap building
What I really want is a IP KVM that connects to a MacMini using a single Thunderbolt port for everything - power, video, keyboard and mouse
I came to a similar conclusion: TiniMiniMicro 1L PCs are in many ways a better option than Raspberry Pis. Or any mini PC with an Intel N-series CPU.
It quite common, a stepping stone between using rented hardware and having your own data center.
At work we have ~10 of these passive cooled TopTon n100 with their 5x Intel i226-IV 2.5GE interfaces laying around for emergency router setups. They are great for a lot of things.
But be careful: starting with the n150 you will need active cooling.
I have an n305 with the CPU thermally bonded to its small aluminum case with a quiet 80 mm Noctua fan screwed into the fins of the case. The manufacturer on Ali Express said the fan is optional, but it can get to ~85°F in the room where the computer is, so I want to be careful. At idle, the CPU reports 5-10°F above the room's temperature.
It has 10 TB spread across 3 SSDs and 2 x 10 TB spinning drives attached. It's a Time Machine target for a handful of Macs and a Borg Backup target for several machines, including some across the internet using Tailscale. It's also running Home Assistant with AppDaemon (with dozens of little apps), Frigate (object detection for 3 Ethernet-connected cameras using a Google Coral TPU over USB), Paperless-ngx (15 GB of PDFs), LibrePhotos (1.2 TB of photos), Syncthing, Tiny Tiny RSS, a UniFi Controller, distinct PostgreSQL instances for various of those, and more. I count 21 Docker containers running right now, and not everything is containerized.
The spinning drives are powered down with a smart plug for all but 1-2 hours at night for backups. With those off, the thing sips power... 10-15 W most of the time with occasional spikes up to ~30 W when LibrePhotos is doing facial recognition or Paperless-ngx is updating its ML models. It never feels slow. I've been running one or more servers at home for 30+ years, and this single machine handles everything so much better than any combination of machines I've had.
We used them for a while and there are some photos here https://www.screenly.io/blog/2023/05/25/updated-qc-rig/
Pi's are powerable from the header pins, so you could save the usb adapters and route power directly from the relays to the power pins.
I'd also be tempted to add a way to access the serial consoles and the power button-equivalent pins of the pis for a lom-equivalent. It might be doable with a pico or two.
Nowadays with pi5s you could also of course hook a m2 board up to the pci lane and skip the m2 enclosures.
I'd personally prefer a recessed push-button power switch too; the switch you use would make me nervous something would drop on it and turn the system off
dnemmers•3d ago
Could work well at home, however.