Storj on top of a Raspberry Pi + 3.5" HDD?

Node Operators
21

I see some say it’ll be fine. I’m not using a RPi3 for Storj, but I thought it wasn’t great especially because it doesn’t have much RAM?
As long as nodes work great and disk can keep up, it’s probably fine, otherwise it may face some memory issue I reckon.
Also less RAM means less cache usable by the OS to optimize process executions, and more swap used which wears off the SD card (unless booted from another drive).

I’m using a RPi4 (4gb RAM, swap disabled) for 6 nodes and it works great and uses only 400-ish MB of RAM when the network is quiet. But it can go up to 800MB when things are more active, or even higher if a disk stalls (but at that point, if the disk doesn’t recover soon enough all the ram could get eaten up until the OOP killer stops the node process - this is not likely to happen with a CMR disk I suppose).

From my experience that’s totally true. On my setup, 2.5" disks have poor performances and take ages to run the filewalker when nodes restart + they regularly cause a lot of io/wait. And for the same capacity, they are more expensive than 3.5" drives.
I have only one 3.5" drive dedicated to Storj, and it works way better. It draws more power and is noisy though. But considering how much more space it can store, it’s quite energy efficient per TB when fully utilized.

Just make sure you choose a case with a power switch that stays mecanically ON so it restarts in case of power outage.
I have this one:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B078K4SCLM?psc=1&ref=ppx_pop_mob_b_asin_title

Not sure that’s what you’re expecting but… ^^’ there it is:

2 Likes
22

here are a couple of suggestions of items that I’ve used in the past:

For an HDD enclosure, I’ve used this before and it works just fine. There’s a little fan in the bottom that can help keep the disk cool(er), and it has a power switch/button that means it will power back on if the power goes out (in alignment with a suggestion someone else had.

I would also agree that moving the root/boot to an SSD is a great idea, one that I have done on all of the rpi nodes that I’ve built. I’ve just used a fairly inexpensive 120GB PNY 2.5" drive. There’s enough space for everything, plus I’ve even gone the path of putting my storj dbs on this too for faster lookups, and increased the swap space on the rpis to try and utilize a bit more of the space on this drive.

to go along with that SSD, I had purchased a “SNANSHI” usb-c enclosure, which was just a clear plastic with little pcb with sata connectors on one side and a usb-c on the other. when I just pulled it up from my purchase history, it appears that they are now selling a different version that is made of aluminum…

in the end I ended up putting all of my rpi’s and ssds into a cluster case, mainly for the organization of them and the cooling is pretty great with those big fans and the previously installed heat sinks.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08FH3V6GV/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

so to be able to secure the ssd’s to the shelves, I had to strip out the SATA/usb pcb from the ssd enclosre and just connect it bare, directly to the ssd sata connectors. Then I used a really short usb-c to usb-a cable to connect up to the rpi in the shelf above it.

as previously mentioned the only bottle necks I can really think of using a rpi3 (all of mine have been 4s with at least 4GB of RAM) would be the RAM and USB ports being 2.0. The rpi4s have two usb 3.0 ports…

hope this helps.

2 Likes
23

Why would you do that?

But you said you also have the Microserver that is running anyways. Why would want to waste more electricity?

But your Microserver also accepts 3.5 inch HDDs, so again, why would you want to run an extra device?

I personally would not at all do that.

All of these HDD cases are really inefficient and consume more power than the Pi itself.

24

Because my HP Microserver starts to run out of space. Except some other VM I have on it, most of the disk space is used for Storj. So I am limited to what I can do because I have no more resources (memory, CPU and disk space) on it.

Following what I said above, I want to use my Microserver for other purposes. So I thought about moving the Storj disks to another server and then Raspberry Pi seems to be a good choice. Otherwise, I would have to set up a completely new server, which will cost a lot more at the beginning.

25

Then using a Raspi is of course just fine, just keep in mind that you will consume a lilttle bit more electricity than before :slight_smile:

As you already assumed, the way to go here is using a SATA to USB adapter/case that uses its own power brick.

2 Likes
26

I cannot support that. My Pi working with the same card third year.

1 Like
27

Probably has something to do with what your running on it, and the brand of sd cards. All 3 of my pi4 have had the same issues either currupt os or sd card fails. The sd cards get super hot and the usb drives i have used get super hot as well.

28

This combo is working like a charm. :heart_eyes: