Why would I pay 539 eurodollars for a pi when I could buy a reasonable consumer-grade PC for that money? or just go with an actual enterprise server, although used?
edit: I even tried overclocking the Pi and dialing down the simulation distance in Minecraft.
Doesn’t mean I’d spend this money on a pi, but I’m probably not the target.
Minecraft servers are likely the heaviest of the ~15 services I run at home. You chose a service that I wouldn't have expected to work.
My Pi 4 4GB runs an MPD server that outputs to a HiFiBerry DAC, Zabbix and Grafana. It's done so smoothly for about a year now.
At one time it acceptably ran Nextcloud, Gitea, Matrix Synapse, Vaultwarden and a file server in systemd containers.
At another time, it replaced an old AMD e350 machine I was using for backups - the Pi 4 was faster than that old desktop. The bottleneck was the CPU load when transferring data over SSH.
[1] - https://protectli.com/
I also run a Navidrome instance on it and use Subtracks on Android so I can get all my music whilst out and about.
It also runs a Mopidy server so I can play music at home over the proper speakers using Mopidy Mobile.
It also acts as a DDNS informer so that I can always get home when my ISP decides to change my public IP.
It also acts as a SSH gateway and runs a RDP instance on it. I did used to use it as a desktop device and a Moonlight/Steam desktop streamer but now the PC is in the same room, and a Pi400 is downstairs with the TV. That runs much cooler.
All in all a great useful device and not sure how I'd live without it.
For the NVMe, I got an Icybox NVMe enclosure because the other enclosures were problematic. I was using a "SSK Aluminum M.2 NVME SSD Enclosure Adapter, USB 3.1 Gen 2 (10 Gbps) to NVME PCI-E M-Key Solid State Drive External Enclosure (Fits only NVMe PCIe 2242/2260/2280)" - https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B07MNFH1PX
I ended up replacing it with a "ICY BOX M.2 NVMe Enclosure for M.2 NVMe PCIe SSD, USB 3.1 (Gen 2, 10 Gpbs), USB-C & USB-A Cable, Aluminum, Black" - https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B07JJXCSC4
The ICY BOX actually supports booting from it unlike the SSK so I managed to ditch the microSD card too. Here was my enquiry on the forum about it: https://forums.raspberrypi.com/viewtopic.php?t=307291
Once you're set up with Pihole running on it and can SSH into it, installing Navidrome is easy - just follow the installation guide at https://www.navidrome.org/docs/installation/linux/.
For Wireguard installation, I used https://github.com/pivpn/pivpn
I also use a Wireguard UI (which stores its configuration in a different place to the "stock" Wireguard installation in the pivpn above): https://github.com/ngoduykhanh/wireguard-ui
There are some rules to permit incoming traffic on Wireguard in and out: Post up: iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -o eth0 -j MASQUERADE
Post down: iptables -t nat -D POSTROUTING -o eth0 -j MASQUERADE
For DDNS, I just run a cron job that connects to a free plan on https://freedns.afraid.org/. They have a bash script to use - very simple.
I run Wireguard on my phone as an "always on" VPN which connects to the domain registered at the DDNS service, so I know that mydomain will also go home.
To get DNS working over the Wireguard, you may have to change the Pihole settings to "permit all origins" for DNS requests.
For incoming traffic at my home, the router port forwards the appropriate Wireguard port to the Pi (on its static address). The Pi is not set as a DMZ or anything.
Enjoy!
It like trying to tow a trailer with a dirt bike and complaining when it doesn't move.
The PI as a server shines in running low-to-medium power services and having a low entry and upkeep costs.
I run a Plex server, Gitea server, samba filesharing and qbitorrent on a 4gb rpi4 and it just sit there and chugs along using like a tenth of the power a normal computer would, taking almost no space, making no noise and costing like a fifteenth something like a NUC would.
And as a bonus, if it ever does go kaput I can just get another rpi4 and the entire process of setting it all up again would take me 5 minutes max.
N.B.: An 8GB rPi 4/CM4 has more memory, more storage, more compute power, and faster networking and i/o than a Cray supercomputer had in the early 90s! It's a real computer. If you can't do most of the useful jobs on the planet with that level of performance, then you just suck at software. (Yes, I know most Linux distros are Jabba-level obese these days, but still...)
Full disclosure: I have a PiBox on order, and will be prototyping a prepackaged server with it, which may well turn into a product itself.
Where as, I continue to use several ARM home servers consisting of Pi's and Jetson with smaller workloads and applications made for them.
Compare that to a RPi that idles at ~5 W.
They seem to be using the 8GB RP4, which is currently around 100€. Also it comes with a 2 TB SSD for storage which is probably another 150-200€. A 2 port SATA backplane/adapter is probably 20-50€, Power supply, fans and wifi/bluetooth antenna is maybe an additional 30-50€. Even the cheapest case will set you back another 10-20€. So all told the markup isn't as bad as you're making out. Still an open question if it's worth it or not though.
FWIW, I've got a PiBox on order (w/o the drives), and I think the price is VERY reasonable. (No relationship other than waiting customer.) The PiBox "mainboard" that hosts the CM4 has much better I/O capabilities than a garden variety RPi 4. I'm actually going to be using mine for a small, light NAS and application server, and I'm confident it will work well.
They also sell the box without the Pi, SSDs, antenna and fan for 150€, it is up to you to decide if the price is justified, I think it is a bit on the expensive side but not unreasonably so. But if you intend to DIY the same configuration they are selling for 540€, you won't get that much cheaper.
Where are you getting these measurements from? A "consumer-grade PC" idles at a few watts[1]. "enterprise servers" might idle a bit higher but nowhere near 200-250W.
[1] https://www.notebookcheck.net/Lenovo-ThinkCentre-M90n-Nano-D...
I made them myself with a kill-a-watt. The consumer grade PC's idle at ~60W, meanwhile the Dell PowerEdge R710 I have here with me idles at ~250 W.
However, the easiest way to have low idle power is to use a NUC-like computer.
Many models consume between 5 W and 10 W during light load at the wall plug, while those with the highest power consumption use between 10 W and 15 W at the wall plug, during light load.
The fastest SBCs with ARM cores that can be found at a reasonable price are comparable in speed with Intel Jasper Lake, but Raspberry Pi uses obsolete Cortex-A72 cores, which are 2 to 3 times slower.
Even a 7-year old NUC-like computer from Intel/Gigabyte/Zotac etc., with a "Core" CPU, e.g. a Skylake U, is much faster than anything with Jasper Lake or with Cortex-A76 or older ARM cores.
While a new NUC-like computer is more expensive, an old one might be as cheap as a Raspberry Pi, while being much faster.
During the last 20 years, I had a permanently active 24x7 server, which hosts a large number of services, e.g. firewall, router, NTP server, DNS server, DNS proxy and cache, e-mail server, Web server, Web proxy and cache, file server, etc.
The first server which did all that used the fastest Pentium 4 and it had an average power consumption of over 200 W. The current hardware of the server is the 5th version since the beginning. At each upgrade, the average power consumption has been cut into half. The current server consumes around 10 W and it uses an Intel NUC with a Coffee Lake U CPU, together with 4 USB to Ethernet adapters, to provide 5 Ethernet ports.
I have experimented with various ARM-based SBCs, but when old NUCs are available, repurposing them is a higher-performance solution.
Current Dells pull that much without even an OS installed, just sitting idle at a boot screen.
Install a base OS, then docker compose a few services. Or buy a half dozen and deploy k8s.
Boom, "A cheap tiny personal server self hosting" (with COTS parts).
I'll make a post with the parts list and software install steps in a month or so if it would help anyone out. I bought https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09GK2QSY1, and a few alternatives, and I'm going to benchmark their performance under heavy load (using a much studlier machine to generate traffic).
These mini PCs are getting to be _really cheap_. Cheap enough that my home infra is moving towards a tiny mini PC ($100 or less) attached to every pair of monitors, keyboards, and the network, and a central server to do actual work.
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/e/eurodollar.asp#:~:text=....