Hi everyone,
I’d like to seek some advice on a proposed change of my home server setup that I’m considering.
Current setup:
- Raspberry Pi 4 (Raspbian): with openHAB, Node-RED, Mosquitto, Grafana, InfluxDB, UniFi controller
- Raspberry Pi 2 (Raspbian): with piHole, unbound, WireGuard
- DS212 (DSM) as a NAS
Issues:
- High power consumption due to running three systems.
- Limited backups (currently only backing up configuration files).
- Occasional SD card corruptions (fortunately, backups have saved the day).
- The DS212 Web UI seems to get slower with each DSM update.
Proposed Solution: I’ve been considering consolidating everything onto one machine using a modern proxmox+Docker setup instead of running everything bare metal. Here’s my idea after some research:
- Get an ASRock N100-based mainboard with 32GB RAM, a 500GB NVME drive, and 2 SATA ports (for the two 2TB SATA drives from my Synology).
- Use the NVME for Proxmox and create two VMs:
- VM for all the smart home/networking applications (migrated from the RPi4+RPi2), isolated into Docker containers.
- VM for NAS functionality (any suggestions for a NAS OS?), using the two SATA drives in a RAID 1 configuration.
Questions: I would greatly appreciate your advice on the following:
- Does my proposed hardware configuration seem suitable for my needs? Anything better than the N100? Do I need 32GB?
- What NAS OS would you recommend for the second VM (TrueNAS, OMV, anything else)?
- Are there potential drawbacks or challenges I should be aware of with this new setup? I have the feeling I am over complicating things.
- Any other thoughts or suggestions?
I would recommend an ultra small form factor or USSF mini pc, either dell, hp or lenovo.
You can buy these used from ebay or Facebook marketplace.
Most are core Intel core i5, anything from 6th gen is good.
They normally support up to 32GB of ram, and 1 or 2 m.2 SSDs/NVME and a sata 2.5 drive.
I would say 16GB is plenty for what you do.
Mine runs proxmox and a bunch of LXC containers, running in a docker swarm cluster, with 16GB, and I can still play with Windows VMs.
Mine idles at 13w, peaks to 35w under load.
I have a 2tb crucial ssd with my data and I do backups using kopia to an external 2.5 HD.
Really good all in one, small and efficient setup.
- Do you have numbers on power usage? Your spinning rust drives are using 5-10 watts each. It’s likely that they’re using more individually than both Pi’s combined.
- This is fixable with more software
- Unfortunately a part of life with Raspberry Pi. Maybe consider swapping to an SSD?
- This is a 12 year old Synology. I empathize though, I’m running a DS416j I bought in 2015, so almost as old.
My suggestion would be to focus on getting a better Synology with an Intel chip that can run Docker. You’ll start off being familiar with the base OS and can make your backups rock solid and you’ll be able to run whatever you want with Docker. Assuming you can swing a 4 bay NAS you’ll also have room for expansion.
Thanks for your input.
ad 1) I have two 3.5 HDDs (Seagate IronWolf). But primarily used for backups from our PCs. While I don’t have concrete measurements, I assume the NAS is idling more than 90% of the time.
ad 2+3) Not a big deal, but rather an inconvenience since I have to reinstall the base system and packages but can use the configuration backups. So this is a nice to have.
ad 4) Actually, I hadn’t thought about this before. The main concern is that my NAS currently remains mostly idle. Running Docker containers might prevent it from idling, raising the question of whether I’d need to migrate to SSDs to reduce power consumption? This would double the migration costs (two 4TB SSDs for both the current data and the additional storage for Docker containers).
“High power consumption”
cries over poweredge machines
Proxmox
If you are only rocking a few TBs, I’d recommend considering a way to switch to an all NVMe 2TB setup.
I don’t there it yet but I’m either going to do a 4x SSD or a 8x NVMe icydock… But some newer mobos have two NVMe slots which can get you 8 TBs that you can then slap zfs on via proxmox.
I’m also looking to go down the path of getting an icydock. Can you please clarify your proposed set up? Will you be getting an icydock and connecting it to your main hardware running proxmox via usb? I’m hoping to get an icydock to expand storage and connect it via usb to intel run which runs proxmox
Two Pi and a 1,6Ghz single core ARM NAS…
This is around 20 watts idle and ~30 watts under load…nowhere near “high consumption”. The N100 is just around 15 watts idle and more capable systems like a Ryzen 5 7600x idle at 25 watts. So lets say you swap everything to a N100 single system. This will maybe save you around 5 watts while idle which means ~40kw/h savings per year.
You do not have the computing power to run VM’s/applications that could utilize 32GB RAM. Everything you mentioned could be run on a machine just at 4GB RAM. The only reason could be the use of ZFS and a lot of disks and TB’s of space. You should be fine aiming at 16GB RAM.
In terms of OS. I use Unraid because its very easy to use and does not require you to have HDDs spun up like with traditional RAID. Saves me a lot of energy and wear on my drives. It is also capable of running Docker containers and various VMs.
Thanks for the input. I initially came across lower power consumption estimates for the N100, approximately 5-7W, but I now re-checked and indeed some people report idling at around 13-15W. I guess a lot depends on the peripherals and the quality of the PSU. But such a slight improvement wouldn’t be worth the hassle
It’s worth the hassle. If you are obsessed with power consumption, consider the fact that Pis are very power inefficient. They draw less but also produce way less than other CPUs. Performance per Watt is shit. They were conceived as thinkerware. They are not reliable the way everyone here wants them to be.
Just to put your puny power concerns into perspective. My homelab draws around 130w on average. One big box with lots of HDDs, 2 Lenovo Tinies, networking.
My laptop draws more power in 24h than my homelab. If you have a desktop, the discrepancy is even bigger. Nearly anything in your household blows your setup out of the water. I live in a country with relatively high power costs and I can assure you, your concerns are nothing more than a thought experiment.
I would get the N100, get 2x2TB SSD as well as some smaller SSDs for VM and LXC storage. Create a hypervisor with the appliances you need - NAS, Docker, heck if the board has a free PCIe slot you can put a 4x1GbE NIC and spin up a networking VM too. This way you can streamline the maintenance - updates, backups, etc. And the best part is that this single box will be waaay above anything you have now.
You consider that high power consumption? My home server usually sits around 320 Watts, and I still don’t consider that high power consumption.