Star Trek: The Original Series S3E21 “The Cloud Minders”
Bonus:
It starts with one home server. Then you’re like “But if I just add another server, I can do this. Oh, well, this other thing really needs its own server, too, so what’s one more? Oh, I should separate the traffic from my home network, so I’ll need to get a managed switch. But now I need another server so I can do testing and maybe one more for development. And I can’t go without backups, so throw in a storage server. Ugh, what if the power goes out? Better get a couple of beefy UPSs to hold me over.”
Before you know it, you have:
- 12 terabytes of storage
- 11 servers serving
- 10 VLANs
- 9 cron jobs running
- 8 cables tangled
- 7 things a beeping
- 6 dead ports
- 5 rats nests of coooords
- 4 UPSs beeping
- 3 failing drives
- 2 loud switches
- And a soaring electric bill
Only 12 TB? You can’t even download spotify with 12 TB.
The cord rats nest is so real.
Ugh, tell me about it. I downsized from rack servers to a bunch of mini PCs with the laptop-style power bricks and the rats nest went from “ugly but manageable” to “complete fustercluck”.
Recently splurged on some USB-C power-delivery adapters and the appropriate USB-C to laptop-style charger cables and that made things infinitely better. Wasn’t cheap (though not super expensive) but well worth it.
I host everything on one System76 Meerkat, 2 Pi’s (one OrangePi and one RaspberryPi), and a Synology NAS. I also have Unifi networking stuff (router/POE Switch/APs).
I’ve been eyeing one of these (of various sizes): https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0CSCWVTQ7
But I don’t need it as the shelves holding everything works, but the rats nest is getting annoying.
I’ve been wanting to dive into the 10" rack space for a while now. Even saw there were some designs I could mostly 3D print. I recently decommissioned my last 19" rack appliance, so I guess I’m closer than ever now though I’d need to find a 16 port switch that would fit (would prefer that to linking two 8-port switches).
Haven’t really hosted anything on a Pi (except Kiwix on a spare Pi Zero W2) since I have a bunch of thin clients that I got dirt cheap in a bulk drunk eBay purchase. They’re more capable (though the Pi 5 is close if not entirely surpassing them now) and a bit easier to shove together.
How are the Orange Pis? I’ve not messed with them, but the specs look too good to be true.
I’ve been eyeing this switch as well (16 port, with 8 being PoE, and very compact):
https://techspecs.ui.com/unifi/switching/usw-lite-16-poe?I’m very pleased with the OrangePi. I use it for my Jellyfin server. It sometimes struggles with real-time 4k transcoding, but I generally transcode videos before watching things anyways, so it’s not a problem.
8 PoE ports. Nice. I’ve got a separate 5 port PoE switch currently and wouldn’t be sad about getting rid of that.
being that compact, and being fanless, I’d worry about temps in the switch. It’s also a max 45watt total across all 8 ports, so it’s not great, but at $200, it’s not bad.
I’m very pleased with the OrangePi. I use it for my Jellyfin server. It sometimes struggles with real-time 4k transcoding
What model OPi do you use and what system image (Armbian, Diet Pi, OrangeOS)?
I’ve got the Orange Pi Zero 2W (effectively the OPi 3 in a different form factor) and also run Jellyfin on it, but there’s no stable GPU support in Armbian. It also doesn’t even transcode 720p at a usable rate, so I just pre-encode everything to something it can direct stream.
It’s not my primary JF server, but it is nice to have during power outages and such since I can run it all day from a power bank.
I got a ‘Orange Pi 5 Plus 16GB’, and have Armbian on it. I haven’t noticed any GPU issues, so I’m surprised to hear there may be no support. It seems to work well for me. I’ll have to read up on that. Maybe I should be running something else.
How are the Orange Pis?
I got the 4 GB Orange Pi version of the Zero W2. The performance is there but I found it to be a bit quirky. That said, you might have better luck using the manufacturer’s images. Only reason I didn’t was that they were several years old and on an unsupported kernel. Took some doing, but I finally got Armbian working stable.
Tips:
- Don’t enable zram for more than 50%. It’ll happily compress more than that, but allocating more than 50% causes all kinds of random weirdness and crashes.
- The GPU either doesn’t work or isn’t stable. I gave up on it and just pre-encoded the media to a format that Jellyfin wouldn’t need to transcode.
- Make sure the antenna is mounted away and perpendicular from the main board. Had a lot of weird EMF-induced crashes when the antenna was parallel to the board inside a case.
- You will need a heatsink. Unless you underclock it below 1 GHz, a heatsink isn’t optional like it is on a Pi.
- Unless you just need the USB A ports or the IR receiver, skip the expansion board. The ribbon cable that connects it exacerbates the EMF issues. The 3 buttons on the front do not work with the Armbian builds (and the overlay that enables them doesn’t seem to work on newer kernels and no one seems to be working on it). The analog audio, likewise, does not work on Armbian with newer kernels and, last I checked, there are no overlays.
I also have a 4 GB Banana Pi in the same “Pi Zero” form factor. I haven’t messed with it much, but the three things I’ve noticed so far is the wifi chip is much better than the Orange Pi (I think it’s a Realtek chip here), the Bluetooth doesn’t work in Armbian (though it’s close), and it has eMMC which makes the system much faster.
And freedom
True, but the cost of my freedom has gone from $0.09 to $0.21 per KWh over the last 3 years lol.
Better then soaring cloud costs.
Oof, that jump might make solar more attractive if you get enough light!
Definitely looking into it as my spring project.
But if I just add another server, I can do this.
Except for a backups pull server, I never said that. What do you want to do that your old server couldn’t?
Also:
9 cron jobs running
This one is a rookie’s number :)
This one is a rookie’s number :)
Also
12 terabytes of storage
It feels kind of rude/braggish to say this, but my storage RAID is made up of individual drives that are each larger than that. But we all have to start somewhere! Nowhere in that comment is it implied that this was the final configuration for this server, just a “before you know it”
I built my RAID5 array back in 2018 or so, when 3 terabyte drives were about $100. Five active drives, a 6th hot spare, and a 7th cold spare waiting to go in when one of the first 5 fail… Which hasn’t happened yet. I’ve been considering putting the 7th drive in and making the 6th drive an active part of the array.
These days, I back up the array on to a 10 terabyte drive in my desktop computer that I bought for $120 IIRC about 2 years ago. Sigh.
I feel late to the data hoarding party, but I’m quickly building up my ship’s archives now.
I don’t data hoard. That I pay usenetserver to do for me. You could never hoard all that anyway, and nor should you.
