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I've been thinking about moving my home server to an ARM-based setup to reduce power consumption/fan noise. My situation is closer to 'glorified NAS' that runs

I've been thinking about moving my home server to an ARM-based setup to reduce power consumption/fan noise. My situation is closer to 'glorified NAS' that runs a few additional oddball things, though. Are you just using USB 3.0 to SATA in the cases where such is needed?

tombert 7y ago
Yep! My setup is a bit weird now; I have some cases that holster the drives [0], with a low-wattage ATX power supply that exists solely to power the drives. I a bunch of sata male-to-female cables on the case [1], and then a bunch of USB3 to SATA adapters plugged into a couple USB3 hubs into my leader Jetson. I have ZFS On Linux set up on there, and have an NFS share set up on the ZFS mount. I use Kubernetes to distribute my projects across the cluster, and use NFS for any kind of shared data. It works way better than one might think. [0] https://www.ebay.com/itm/4-Bay-USB3-0-2-5-HDD-SATA-Hard-Drive-Dock-Docking-Station-For-9-5-12-5mm/264295176258?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649 https://www.ebay.com/itm/4-Bay-USB3-0-2-5-HDD-SATA-Hard-Driv... [1] https://www.ebay.com/itm/HDD-SATA-Male-to-SATA-Female-cables-Converter-for-PC-Esata-Hard-Disk-Accessories/143272417945?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649 https://www.ebay.com/itm/HDD-SATA-Male-to-SATA-Female-cables... EDIT: Just a note, if you decide for some reason to copy my design, I'm flattered; make sure you either get an ATX power supply that's extremely low wattage or is smart enough to lower the wattage based on load. I made the mistake of taking a power supply out of an old gaming rig the first time I did this, and it ended up consistently using 600W all the time, leading to a hefty power bill one month. I was able to find a power supply that peaked at 200W on ebay for ten bucks, and seems to idle at around 50W, which is much more manageable.
rb808 7y ago
I have a Pentium NUC which works fine for this and no noise and still x86.
- tombert 7y ago
  I've debated buying a NUC, but at least on Intel's website, buying just the board cost somewhere in the neighborhood of 500 USD; for that price I can buy 10 Raspberry Pi 4's or ODroid XU4s. Granted, in order to use them to their full potential, you end up having to learn a lot about distributed computing (which is a bonus for geeks like me, but maybe not most people), but if your goal is to use it as a server, the NUCs seemed a bit overpriced to me. That said, if anyone is looking to stay within the x86/x64 family of CPUs, I actually recommend looking for a used Wyse/Dell thin client on eBay. You can often get a decent quad-core system with USB3.0 and 4-8gb of RAM for around a hundred USD.
  - goosehonk 7y ago
    "Just the board" NUC kits also include the CPU, case, fan, power supply, wifi, bt, etc everything except RAM and storage.
  - henryfjordan 7y ago
    That NUC is still going to have more computing power than your 10-node RPI cluster though. By a lot.
jamespo 7y ago
Have a look at odroid HC1/2
- tombert 7y ago
  The HC1 is great, and I had one, but the problem I had with it was that it doesn't really have any good support for RAID (since it only has one SATA port), making it a little unfit for a real NAS. I ended up having to plug in hard drives via USB, and at that point, you're better off buying the ODroic XU4 (or a newer board like the ODroid N2 or the Nvidia Jetson Nano) due to it having USB3.0 built in. When I was using it, I ended up not using the built-in SATA port and instead just using it as yet-another-node in my cluster of ODroid XU4s

tombert 7y ago

Yep! My setup is a bit weird now; I have some cases that holster the drives [0], with a low-wattage ATX power supply that exists solely to power the drives. I a bunch of sata male-to-female cables on the case [1], and then a bunch of USB3 to SATA adapters plugged into a couple USB3 hubs into my leader Jetson. I have ZFS On Linux set up on there, and have an NFS share set up on the ZFS mount. I use Kubernetes to distribute my projects across the cluster, and use NFS for any kind of shared data. It works way better than one might think. [0] https://www.ebay.com/itm/4-Bay-USB3-0-2-5-HDD-SATA-Hard-Drive-Dock-Docking-Station-For-9-5-12-5mm/264295176258?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649 https://www.ebay.com/itm/4-Bay-USB3-0-2-5-HDD-SATA-Hard-Driv... [1] https://www.ebay.com/itm/HDD-SATA-Male-to-SATA-Female-cables-Converter-for-PC-Esata-Hard-Disk-Accessories/143272417945?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649 https://www.ebay.com/itm/HDD-SATA-Male-to-SATA-Female-cables... EDIT: Just a note, if you decide for some reason to copy my design, I'm flattered; make sure you either get an ATX power supply that's extremely low wattage or is smart enough to lower the wattage based on load. I made the mistake of taking a power supply out of an old gaming rig the first time I did this, and it ended up consistently using 600W all the time, leading to a hefty power bill one month. I was able to find a power supply that peaked at 200W on ebay for ten bucks, and seems to idle at around 50W, which is much more manageable.

rb808 7y ago

I have a Pentium NUC which works fine for this and no noise and still x86.

tombert 7y ago
I've debated buying a NUC, but at least on Intel's website, buying just the board cost somewhere in the neighborhood of 500 USD; for that price I can buy 10 Raspberry Pi 4's or ODroid XU4s. Granted, in order to use them to their full potential, you end up having to learn a lot about distributed computing (which is a bonus for geeks like me, but maybe not most people), but if your goal is to use it as a server, the NUCs seemed a bit overpriced to me. That said, if anyone is looking to stay within the x86/x64 family of CPUs, I actually recommend looking for a used Wyse/Dell thin client on eBay. You can often get a decent quad-core system with USB3.0 and 4-8gb of RAM for around a hundred USD.
- goosehonk 7y ago
  "Just the board" NUC kits also include the CPU, case, fan, power supply, wifi, bt, etc everything except RAM and storage.
- henryfjordan 7y ago
  That NUC is still going to have more computing power than your 10-node RPI cluster though. By a lot.

jamespo 7y ago

Have a look at odroid HC1/2

tombert 7y ago
The HC1 is great, and I had one, but the problem I had with it was that it doesn't really have any good support for RAID (since it only has one SATA port), making it a little unfit for a real NAS. I ended up having to plug in hard drives via USB, and at that point, you're better off buying the ODroic XU4 (or a newer board like the ODroid N2 or the Nvidia Jetson Nano) due to it having USB3.0 built in. When I was using it, I ended up not using the built-in SATA port and instead just using it as yet-another-node in my cluster of ODroid XU4s