Hi all,
I want to spin up a small home server. Nothing crazy, maybe 4 or 8GB ram at most. 1 Docker instance running a few privacy frontends (Invidious, Redlib, Xcancel, SearxNG, etc.) and split tunneling VPN connections for each one.
Obviously, a Raspberry Pi 4 or higher is the internet’s favorite choice, but I don’t need wireless connectivity, I just need a single HDMI and 2 USB ports to get everything set up, one ethernet port, and a dream in my heart.
Has anyone use alternatives like Le Potato or Orange Pi? I’m curious what their community support is like, and if there’s a FOSS-friendly standard.
Thanks!
I run a RockPro64 with Arch Arm. No need for a monitor - you just connect over SSH.
I’ve owned a few devices like Orange Pi but really more as a curiosity that I never did much with. I have, however, seen discussions suggesting that when you move away from the RasPi ecosystem, support for various tooling gets more complicated because you’re in a much smaller pool of hardware and this makes them more effort to setup. I don’t know the validity of that, but it sounded plausible to me.
Just get a Pi. Just because you don’t need wifi doesn’t mean it won’t potentially be useful down the road.
radxa has very good sbc’s at the most economical pricing and great software support. only thing is they get sold out pretty quickly. something like X4 or rock 5B will be best for your needs. dragon q6a is also extremely efficient but they get sold out almost immediately after stock comes.
they sell through https://arace.tech/ so subscribe to them if for back in stock alerts
It probably isn’t going to cost less to get something without wifi.
Nanopi. I have a couple. They’re not bad.
I have a RPI 4b and 3 lenovos (m93p, m710q, p330).
You can’t beat the RPI for power draw (~2w idle and ~7w under max load) but I suspect if you wanted to look at $ to utility measure you’d probably prefer the Lenovo M93P. $50 USD. Mine has i7-4785t, 16GB ddr3 (2x8iirc?) with ethernet, USB etc. Bought 2023/4. I expect base model is still that price now (mines upgraded). The only caveat is that it doesn’t have HDMI, it has display port out, but that’s just a $5 dongle or SSH issue. M73 would be a touch cheaper.
Iirc the TDP is 35w max and can be lowered / undervolted a touch (don’t update the BIOS - it blocks throtlestop).
I turned mine into a retro PC slash game server for the kids (luanti etc). But the siren call of doing truly impossible things with the RPI is too beguiling :)
Eg: running diet pi (headless) with all of my services (media stack, privacy, docs, search, images etc) takes about 300 megabytes (or 650mb if I have to boot into xfce).
300mb, 2-3w.
That shouldn’t be possible. I love it.
My next goal is to create an expert system / pseudo llm that sources answers based on user provided markdown or PDF, ZIM files and 4get search or Tavily.
The advantage here is that 1) speed will be stupid fast as no neural network crap (outside of optional extra Markov chain garnish) 2) not stochastic (but allow for llm as optional “plug in module” - pi might actually run a 135M at non glacial speeds) 3) still serves openAI compat endpoint.
Thanks for this, this sounds like where I’m headed. I just hadn’t even considered thin clients/mini PCs, and it sounds like a lot of people are using Lenovos for this exact thing. I’m not at the point yet of doing something big, just small home lab, but I would like to get to the point of hosting immich for the family, and maybe having an LLM or SD in there at some point. But by then I’m hoping the RAMpocalypse is easing up. For now, it’s just privacy front ends until I know what I’m doing.
Go for it! The m73 is cheap enough (and powerful enough) to run all that and ddr3 is still not insane (say, 2x8gb 1600mhz sodimm if want / need). $100 or so, all up, if you shop around / your local market pending.
Raspberry pi is more elegant / more constrained / more “fuck you, figure it out” but unless you need the challenge, Lenovo is simpler and all around easier first step :). You can’t stick a gpu in it (I think the m920 is the oldest one that has pcie - dunno what they go for. The usual combo is something like a 920 and a Quadro P1000 4GB GPU. Maybe ~$300 all up if we’re guessing. At which point, there are better, non shoe box options)
Lenovo thinkcentre tinys
Get an old Android phone, possibly with a dead screen (bootloader must be unlocked). Flash PostmarketOS on it, or (if not supported) Termux. Its idle usage (with WiFi on, screen off) may be considerably less than 1w. It’ll have considerable amounts of CPU cores and RAM, more than a cheap VPS.
Going directly against your ask: a raspberry pi 3b is cheap and has what you need. :)
I went rpi4>n100> a couple n100s and that pi> the dxp4800, I think it’s a pentium, and those n100s. I think I’m ok here, I have networking, compute + local backup, and storage all in their own box.
Used micro PC is often the best deal. Companies offload old SFF i5 and lower machines all the time. They’re all over eBay.
Yeah, I was looking earlier, and sort of didn’t know what to even look for, but then everyone here made suggestions of what to look for. I’m all over this!
Idk if you ever wander over to Reddit, but there’s a poster in /r/homelabsales selling 7 Dell mini PC systems right now.
Thanks- I found an old laptop to give things a test run. I’ll do some thin client shopping once I cut my teeth a bit.
Have fun! It’s a great hobby.
Thanks - I’ve put it off for a while, and didn’t realize how easy this all was to set up!
This is the way to Go!
I have a HP Elitedesk 800 G4 Mini which is running everything (besides storage) in my Home Network. You can Look at the Tiny/Mini/Micro section at Serve the Home https://www.servethehome.com/introducing-project-tinyminimicro-home-lab-revolution/
I used to be of the erroneous mind set that a server had to be some big honkin’, dim the lights, piece of equipment, but that’s not necessarily true now days with modern architecture. Doesn’t take a lot to get a lot back.
Just look at the processors in the Synology offerings, you didn’t need much to run a bunch of services.
Dude same. Back in the day I was dead set on getting older blades and a couple Dell 710 in a rack and “that’s what a real homelab is.”
Now, I still got the rack because I think they look cool, but it’s all decommissioned workstations, a white box unRaid server, and micro/mini PCs; there’s not a single traditional server box in place.
Now, I still got the rack because I think they look cool
I recently decommissioned one of my Dell T320s, and replaced it with the Dell Optiplex 7020 SFF with the i7-4790 and maxed out to 32 gb RAM. I paid $117 USD for the Optiplex 7020 SFF which came with 8GB RAM, and I maxed it out with three more 8 GB RAM sticks for about $75 USD.
The Dell T320 costs ~$40/month in electrical costs in my locale to run. The Dell Optiplex 7020 SFF costs $5-8/month to run. So, less than the duration of this year, I will have recouped my initial $200 investment in the Optiplex 7020 SFF just in power consumption alone, and I’ll have ‘left over’ money if I wanted to get yet another Optiplex 7020 SFF. I have 40+ containers running on the Optiplex 7020 SFF, and it hasn’t broke a sweat yet. Far more quieter than the Dell T320 and less heat funneling into the server room.
I’m going to sell the T320 which is also maxed out at 32 GB RAM, so I’ll have more $$ to replace the other T320. Winner winner chicken dinner.
I love it. The savings are real and can be immense.
I’m shocked with what I’ve been able to do with an old Dell SFF desktop.
Upgraded to 48GB of ram it’s running ESXi hosting a couple Debian VMs, a DietPi VM, 3 Windows VMs, a massive data drive, idles under 20w and peaks at 80w when I’m doing video conversion.
At this point I’m shopping for some old mini PCs to run the VMs as independent servers because their idle power is so low.
Same: https://lemmy.world/post/47654461/24048649
I’m looking for a couple more Optiplex 7020 SFF or similar and just get rid of all the heavy equipment.
Get a NUC or old laptop and install your distro of choice on it. Much less hassle than barely supported ARM boards with ancient kernels.
I just bought a Mac mini for $50 from a local university’s surplus store. I plan to use it as spare hdd space for another device (it came with a 1tb drive), but even being older, it’s still very capable.
Perhaps a similar device could work for you?Yep, I forgot we have an older MBP that can still manage minimums for Docker. Already had redlib up on it.
We have two very prominent universities in the area. Around graduation I discreetly dumpster dive their trash bins. You’d be surprised what I’ve found. Laptops, desktops usually small form factor, monitors, you name it.
you mean, unseparated from the rest of the trash?
There are companies dealing with used and refurbished hardware. There are loads of PCs around that are not bloated enough for Win11, but still make good home servers. Depending on specs and prices, buy more than one for extra RAM, a second SSD, and spare parts.
An old laptop from about 13 years ago barely breaks a sweat running proxmox and a handful of containers and two vms.
Waste not want not. Plus it comes with a keyboard, touchpad and monitor. Plus, built in ups. You might need to add a USB Ethernet dongle but you don’t have to.
I bet just about anyone you know has their old laptop in a drawer somewhere. They’d probably give it to you.
Also to consider are NUCs. I for one got a Firebat with N100 and 8 or 16 GB of RAM and it was already a few years ago cheaper than a RPi 4.
N100 CPU beats any SBC in every aspect except maybe power? Still very low consumption tho. This will leave you headroom for years of selfhosting, because once you get going, there is no coming back.
Nothing more valuable in privacy terms than keeping your photos off the cloud (immich), then data off the cloud (copyparty, nextcloud,…). It never stops and the n100 will support that no problem.
N100/N150 doesn’t use that much more power and going for x64 instead of ARM could be a pretty big benefit too. Depends on what you want of course.
Awesome idea, thanks! I want something that can spend 99% of the time just hiding behind other consoles, and this would work perfectly for that.
Personally, I shuffle photos from my phone to my laptop and then backup manually, which is not awesome. Having my own cloud-based backups for that would be great. Might even get my partner to go for it, which is the hard sell.
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