Raspberry Pi Node Operators?

That’s really clever: you took a commodity USB sled and make it a stand for your RPi!

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Sure, not exactly RPi, but odroid-hc2 with internal sata connector and 3GB used space on CMR disk, and filewalker running 48h and didn’t even end… :smiley:

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might be interesting if fragmented or filewalker is including the databases, or trys to keep on track with incoming files?

I’ve currently got an RPi3 running 3 nodes via docker. The HDDs are in an Orico 6638US3 dock. This is using a JMS567 controller chip so UAS is disabled for it by default in the RPi kernel. (if I’m reading/understanding things correctly) It works fine under Bulk-Only Transport (BOT) mode but maybe not optimal performance. I do have some issues where my nodes will crash, usually with an automatic restart. I still haven’t taken the time to investigate this as and really should. But I will soon be moving this to an RPi4 I’ve received which may help as the memory will have doubled. My oldest node has been running since 2020-11-12 and my newest since 2021-02-06. All on this single RPi3, and with the same SD card. (Maybe this is my crash issue… unlike Alexey I’ve yet to have an SD card fail in an RPi. Maybe now is the time.)

When I move to the RPi4 I’ll also be changing the HDD enclosure. This time to an Orico 9558U3. Again, still a JMS567 controller so still locked in to BOT unless I want to try overriding it. My main reason though for moving to this storage was that the older unit requires the press of a power button for it to start up. I’ve had a few power outages that outlasted my UPS and when power returned my node wouldn’t start up. It couldn’t mount the “missing” hard drives as the dock wasn’t powered on. The 9558U3 has a physical switch power supply… if it’s in the on position then it will power up at return of service.

So I guess my biggest recommendations if you’re going to run on an RPi would be to use a HDD dock/enclosure that will power on when power is applied, and to use something that has a fully compatible chipset. Also don’t try to use any HDD device that will power itself from the RPi. I’d recommend it have an external power source. Not worth it to risk running into RPi undervoltage issues.

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@Craig
Wow! That’s so nice! They also have NAS machines. I wonder what software they run?
About the crashing part, search the thread about Fatal error. I think you have the same problem with the read/write timeouts.
https://forum.storj.io/t/fatal-error-on-my-node/22052?u=snorkel

Uh, sell them.

Profit.

Buy NUC.

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:rofl:
However, I believe RPI 4 can work well. But maybe not so effective?
What’s power consumption?
I guess RPI would consume less.

I use RPi 4 with external USB drive. Power consumption is 7-9 watts.

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@holocronology
Do you know the same for NUC?

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x10 times more power consumption and x2 (or more?) expensive?

Seems not a good advice? What are other benefits except x86 architecture?

Get one that is low-power, not an i7 device. My very old NUC5CPYH is around 6W at idle, and by design cant get much more at full load, because the CPU’s TDP is 6 W total.

It is really insincere from you to quote the top-end model here.

More ports, more RAM, better market availability, possible to mount a proper SSD on SATA/NVMe instead of depending on an SD card for boot device. Newer units also offer quite a lot more compute, even low-power devices.

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I’m with ya! If you want a good way to connect GPIO pins to Ethernet… buy a RPi. If you want a good computer… buy almost anything else. Used SFF systems are so cheap they could sell them by the pound on Ebay…

I have a node built on a Raspberry Pi 4, it has a USB connected WD Ultrastar DC HC320 hard drive in an external box. For RP I had to buy some stuff to connect to a 12V uninterruptible power supply. A fan was also needed. Overall the unit has been working well for 10 months with no major problems.

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