Very new to nodes in general but looking to start with Storj

Storage Node Operators getting started
#1

I have an available Raspberry Pi 4 as well as a 12TB Promise RAID that I would love to utilize as a Storj node.

I have a few questions I’m hoping to get some guidance on:

  • Is this a viable goal given the gear I have to work with?

  • What preparations must be made to the RAID set up prior to setting it up successfully as a node?

  • I have already found a few tutorials on set up, but I’m wondering if there’s a current gold standard I should be working off of.

  • Will this work with Raspian or will I need to install a different OS?

Thank you in advance for the help!

#2

How does the raid connect to the pi 4, is it USB?
It is recommended to have attached storage.

I’ve used raspian or ubuntu, others work too

#3

Hey, thanks for the reply. Not currently in front of it but I know it’s natively thunderbolt. I do have a thunderbolt to usb-c adapter…and I think the raspberry pi 4 has a usb-c input?

Edit: Yes, it has USB-C

#4

I don’t know about thunderbolt but I thought it was greater than usb.

#5

RPi4 has USB-C input for power only. It does though have USB 3.0 ports on it which should help.

I’m running an RPi3 with 3 drives individually mounted to 3 nodes. Working fine so far but I may be bottle-necked for I/O performance. Last time I rebuilt the Pi image I used Raspbian lite (or whatever they call the RPi OS now) and the instructions available in the Storj documentation portal.

Note that I’m still using the Pi SD card for OS, also storing my identity on the HDDs instead of the Pi SD card, and regularly copying my .bash_history to the HDDs so if the SD card blows out on me I have all my important stuff still accessible. I can rebuild the card in about half an hour. I probably should see about putting the OS on a USB drive though, I have a few old SSDs kicking around that would be good for that.

Edit: Oh, I’m also not using the --memory=800m parm for docker, and I built my identity on a normal desktop computer.

#6

This is hugely helpful, thank you very much. So I’ll need to look into a thunderbolt --> USB A adapter it seems.

#7

Specifically a Thunderbolt to USB A 3.0 adapter. Never looked at them so don’t know if they make less than 3.0 Thunderbolt adapters…

#8

Gotcha. I’ll do some research and see what’s available. Sounds like I’m sunk unless I can find a viable adapter solution.

#9

For what it’s worth… looks like it can at least be cheap to try. Something like this:
USB 3.0 to Thunderbolt 3 Adapter

#10

Oh wow, yah I’ll certainly give it ago. You’ve been super helpful, Craig, thanks!

#11

So it look like I’ll need some sort of thunderbolt to usb A adapter and I can’t seem to find anything that would work.

Anyone have any suggestions?

#12

It seems I do stand corrected. I was watching the TinyPilot KVM YouTube video from Craft Computing and in that setup the controlled computer uses the RPi4’s USB-C jack for the I/O. This was news to me. Maybe your Thunderbolt to USB-C adapter will work. You will still need to find a way to power the Pi though. The TinyPilot kit has a dongle allowing both the USB I/O for the controlled computer and incoming power to the Pi to be merged. Unless your adapter somehow supplies that power, which I’d be doubtful of, you’ll need another way to power the Pi. Both the GPIO pins and the Ethernet port (via PoE) can be used.

Personal opinion though, I don’t like powering from the GPIO pins unless you really trust your power supply. Going right to the GPIO bypasses the Pi’s onboard voltage regulator, or at least it did on older versions. I would suspect the PoE would also skip that power port regulator as well but there may be regulation between separating the power from the Ethernet and supplying it to the board… I believe this setup requires a specific hat and regulation may be on there.

Do keep us posted on your build. I’m curious to know what you learn about getting the Promise device to work with an RPi!