7 ms·

Raspberry Pi holds its own against low-cost ARM NAS

131 points by geerlingguy 5y ago

mikece 5y ago
After watching Geerling's video on YouTube about building an ARM NAS I almost went that direction -- but opted for a Synology DS918+ instead because my need for a NAS is not just experimental but something that needs to work reliably.
- Lownin 5y ago
  What happens when the Sinology dies? Do I have to buy another Synology to mount my array again? Does it have to be the same model, or family of models?
  - mikece 5y ago
    I haven't tried pulling one of the drives from my system and trying to read it with another box but I imagine just about any Linux system should be able to read BTRFS drives, no? Under the covers Synology's DSM is Linux with some proprietary apps on top.
    - geerlingguy 5y ago
      Yeah I know at least ASUSTOR's ADM and Synology's DSM are both basically lightweight Linux distros (usually on an older kernel than what you'd expect building something custom), and they use standard Linux storage tooling (for mdadm RAID or btrfs).
  - geerlingguy 5y ago
    I haven't tested it on Synology, but at least on ASUSTOR, the RAID arrays are set up using mdadm internally—so I was able to pull the drives, plug them into a Pi through a SATA card, and recover the array pretty easily using mdadm. The vendor NASes do seem to add extra partitions besides just one main 'md0', though—so you probably couldn't expect to yank the drives from a Synology and pop them into an ASUSTOR directly. I also tested pulling drives configured in the Drivestor and putting them in the Lockerstor, and that worked, but there were quirks if I tried in the opposite direction. In the end, I would rather make sure I have a complete/separate backup of the NAS before attempting to move the drives, just in case.
  - aparks517 5y ago
    I'd lean toward restoring from backup either way, since the hardware failure might have caused data corruption that's not immediately obvious.
  - psz 5y ago
    Yeah. You can pull drives out and mount them in regular Linux. Synology uses standard Linux tools. https://kb.synology.com/DSM/tutorial/How_can_I_recover_data_from_my_DiskStation_using_a_PC https://kb.synology.com/DSM/tutorial/How_can_I_recover_data_...
- timbit42 5y ago
  What do you think about Synology only allowing their rebranded Toshiba drives to work in their NAS? That's a deal breaker for me. EDIT: Source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29596179 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29596179
  - kencausey 5y ago
    Where did you get that idea? Below are links to Synology acknowledged compatible drives with multiple brands and even that doesn't imply that only these will work: https://www.synology.com/en-us/compatibility?search_by=products&model=DS918%2B&category=hdds_no_ssd_trim&p=1&change_log_p=1 https://www.synology.com/en-us/compatibility?search_by=produ... https://www.synology.com/en-us/compatibility?search_by=products&model=DS918%2B&category=m2_ssd_internal&p=1&change_log_p=1 https://www.synology.com/en-us/compatibility?search_by=produ...
    - johngalt 5y ago
      That's a Synology released four years ago. Contrast with a model released in February this year. Not a single drive non-Synology drive on the HCL larger than 4TB: https://www.synology.com/en-us/compatibility?search_by=products&model=RS2421RP%2B&category=hdds_no_ssd_trim&p=1&change_log_p=1 https://www.synology.com/en-us/compatibility?search_by=produ... It's not a hard requirement to use Synology drives, but on the newer/higher-end models the options to not use Synology drives are very limited. For example the FS2500 only has four models of SSD on the HCL and two are Synology. IMHO, the price premium for the Synology branded drives is reasonable. Pay for the validated drives. Maintaining a broad HCL is no small task. https://blog.synology.com/in-pursuit-of-reliability-hat5300-enterprise-hard-drives https://blog.synology.com/in-pursuit-of-reliability-hat5300-...
  - sigjuice 5y ago
    Is there a specific Synology NAS model with this restriction? I happen to have Western Digital drives in my Synology DS920+.
    - timbit42 5y ago
- zerkten 5y ago
  You are right that Synology (or an equivalent appliance) is often best. It's more complicated for geeks and data hoarders once we've been using a Synology for a while. When people go down the Synology path they are often running apps and doing more than providing a big pool of storage. I'm finding that my needs have changed towards my NAS being only a pool of storage on my local network. It is there as the first tier of backups to speed up disaster recovery. I feel confident that I could move to a more DIY NAS solution because it would only be used for NAS storage. It's not ideal, but an old desktop is now much better for my app needs, including Plex. Ideally, I'd have a single app box with the power consumption of 4-5 Raspberry Pi. I have only found a couple of ARM server solutions which are fairly old and ARM doesn't have standard sockets etc. because the focus seems to be on SoC instead of replicating what I'm used to with PCs and ATX mobos.
  - solarkraft 5y ago
    I have used an ARM Synology NAS but found it highly inadequate for running services ... or anything but basic storage, really. Only the x86 models support running Linux containers, packaging an application for Synology didn't exactly seem easy to to and the UI is almost unusably sluggish and has super confusing UX (it emulates a desktop environment in the browser ... right, very cool). Running an own standard Linux-based NAS is more effort, but not terribly so. The additional flexibility may be worth it: It makes it quite painless to integrate with other data sources and sinks for backups and stuff and can run a lot of personal services (home automation, budgeting tool, IRC bouncer ...).
    - tyingq 5y ago
      There seemed to be change on their low-end stuff when the DS120j/220j came out. The processor and RAM finally seemed enough to not spin off into oblivion, if you avoided the software that catalogs image files. They are dual-core, 512MB RAM, where the previous DS110j was single core, 128MB RAM and the DS115j was single core, 256MB RAM. The previous models just ran way too close to CPU starvation or swapping hell.
  - Helmut10001 5y ago
- Terry_Roll 5y ago
  And I use pi's as interchangeable/swappable processors for a variety of different tasks. Its only casing which people tend to miss with pi's which can be addressed with 3d printing.
- Hamuko 5y ago
  My Synology has been anything but realiable in the past month or so. I've twice had to hard reboot it because it stops working. I think it stops writing all data, which means that even something as simepl as "echo "" > out" will hang forever. Can't even turn it off because DSM stops responding and "sudo reboot" hangs. I have no idea whether it's a disk going bad, the file system going bad or the entire device going bad. It did give a warning that an I/O command timed out on one of the disks, but I've yet to get a S.M.A.R.T. extended test completed on the disk.
  - no_time 5y ago
    Does it hang with ssh timing out? In that case, next time it hangs try opening it up and logging in via the UART interface available on most Synology NASes. Also it may give you extra info if the kernel panicks.
    - Hamuko 5y ago
      No, it's usually just the individual command that hangs. I'm pretty sure I could just ^C end the `echo "" > out` command.
- hackshack 5y ago
  I agonized about this for years. I wanted a proper server, not something embedded or a Pi with a rat's nest of cables, that would still fit in a credenza in the living room. Ended up getting an HP MicroServer Gen8 and absolutely love it. Same cube design as the DS918+, but with proper iLO (remote media, etc.), lots of boot options, and very stoutly built. It feels like a real HP DL300-series server (the Gen9 does not IMHO). I bought it as it was being discontinued. It's running VMware ESXi with FreeNAS on top of that, with an LSI SAS card connected to the drive bays, then hardware-pass-through'ed to the FreeNAS VM. I've got the home's DNS server, Pi-hole, Unifi controller, test VMs, etc. happily virtualized alongside FreeNAS. 16GB RAM total, with 8GB dedicated to FreeNAS. Boot is off a microSD card (on the motherboard, naturally) and VM datastore is on an SSD connected where the optical drive would go. I know I'm violating several recommendations here (low RAM, virtualized FreeNAS, SAS card passed through, etc. etc.) but it does indeed work, very well in fact. 2+ years of serving the home. With the Gen8, HP built almost the perfect home server for tech-oriented types... pity they cost-reduced its successor.
  - abrookewood 5y ago
    Yep, I did the same, though currently running on a much older version. Ubuntu, ZFS and a bunch of mirrored drives. The thing has been rock solid for years.
  - lukeh 5y ago
    Yeah, doing the same, albeit with Solaris (probably a dumb choice but at the time, wanted stable ZFS).
lunfard000 5y ago
Raspberry is not really cheap anymore. The start package (rp4 4gb + charger + sd + ethernet/hdmi cables) is 100 euros in my country. Meanwhile you can get a GK3V mini pc on Aliexpress with a j4125, 8gb LPDDR4 and 256GB SSD for 180 euros, which probably has 3x-4x the performance of the pi.
- justin66 5y ago
  That's quite a markup you're experiencing. A conversion based on US prices makes it seem like you should be able to get that stuff for a little more than sixty Euros. If you can get it at all: availability is tough right now all over, I assume. Is that price difference about shipping costs or VAT or what? > GK3V mini pc That is a very cool looking thing, but targeting a different use case, I would think.
  - lunfard000 5y ago
    idk, maybe you get it a bit cheaper if you look around. This is from a offical store though: https://www.raspberrystore.nl/PrestaShop/complete-sets/245-raspberry-pi-4-starter-pack-2019-4gb-8718734751502.html https://www.raspberrystore.nl/PrestaShop/complete-sets/245-r...
    - wila 5y ago
      It's the rest of the kit that makes it expensive. If you don't need all the parts, then you can shave some off. https://www.kiwi-electronics.nl/nl/merk-raspberry-pi https://www.kiwi-electronics.nl/nl/merk-raspberry-pi
      - lunfard000 5y ago
        I mean, at the very least you always need a charger and a sd card, the barebone price is kinda misleading
        wila 5y ago
moondev 5y ago
Compare this to another aarch64 system, honeycomb lx2 esxi for arm on the lx2 now supports pcie passthru of it's PCIe3.0 x8 slot. I successfully passed the nvme controller and a 25GbE port from a ConnectX-4 into an ubuntu 21.10 uefi aarch64 vm Linux chad-SolidRun-CEX7-Platform 5.13.0-22-generic #22-Ubuntu SMP Fri Nov 5 13:22:27 UTC 2021 aarch64 aarch64 aarch64 GNU/Linux 02:00.0 Non-Volatile memory controller: Samsung Electronics Co Ltd NVMe SSD Controller SM981/PM981/PM983 (prog-if 02 [NVM Express]) Subsystem: Samsung Electronics Co Ltd NVMe SSD Controller SM981/PM981/PM983 0a:00.0 Ethernet controller: Mellanox Technologies MT27710 Family [ConnectX-4 Lx] Subsystem: Mellanox Technologies Stand-up ConnectX-4 Lx EN, 25GbE dual-port SFP28, PCIe3.0 x8, MCX4121A-ACAT
- geerlingguy 5y ago
  I've been wanting to test out one of Solid Run's boards, but haven't had the opportunity. Have you done any benchmarking to see how much throughput you actually get? I would hope it's a lot more than the Pi, but can't know until it's thoroughly tested! One thing to note: the Honeycomb LX2 is listed at $750 :)
  - moondev 5y ago
    Planning to benchmark it a bit later today, thanks for sharing your scripts I will start there and share with you via gh. Also happy to report GPU + audio fully working on ubuntu 21.10 aarch64-uefi. GPU is nvidia gt710 in the pcie3x8 slot via nouveau drivers. May take a crack at some unigine benchmarks later :)
    - geerlingguy 5y ago
      Excellent! I may have to find a way to get one...
- zamadatix 5y ago
  At $750 without memory, storage, or case and only offering a x8 PCIe 3.0 slot it seems to lose the advantage of being cheap while still being worse than a non-ARM64 box in terms of interfaces (and likely performance).
quux 5y ago
Link to youtube version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3jwQzb46Zc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3jwQzb46Zc
karmicthreat 5y ago
I bought a Synology not for the hardware, but the software. I went down the FreeNAS/TrueNAS rabbithole before. But it's a pain and the Synology software lets me get things setup easier.
- yumraj 5y ago
  I was thinking of going the other way, from synology to TrueNas Scale since is Linux based. Are you suggesting that that’s a fool’s errand and I shouldn’t do that?
  - karmicthreat 5y ago
    It just depends on how much effort you want to put into it. I'm a software engineer, not an IT person. Most of the value I generate is related to writing software. So when we needed a shared NAS for the company I setup a FreeNAS server. Got a used ebay rack server and put it on there. Worked just ok, just had to keep tweaking stuff with it, the UI kind of sucked, used ebay servers are crap hardware and fail, etc. Got a Synology had it up and running in an hour and I was pretty much done. Every 6 months I take a look at it or add a user if I need to. But it pretty much takes care of itself and I don't worry about it. It emails me every sunday with its status and I call it good. I can keep doing the actual productive parts of my job.
FpUser 5y ago
Pi 4 is unobtanium now. One of my projects is screwed at the moment because of that
- rcpt 5y ago
  What do you need the pi for? The size? Intel NUC is substantially more powerful and after power bank, SD, case etc you end up paying about the same
  - FpUser 5y ago
    I am well aware about NUCs. I do not really want to talk here why I need Pi in particular. I am however amazed at how easily people here make whole bunch of assumptions that have nothing to do with the actual case.
  - magicalhippo 5y ago
    OTOH if you need the GPIO, power consumption or form factor it's hard to beat a Pi. They're not the best on power, but they're better than a NUC.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
liuliu 5y ago
@geerlingguy, in the post, do you use RAID5 as in madam or RAIDZ1 as in ZFS? Is this bcache setup in front of madam or ZFS? I am actually interested in hearing downsides if bcache used in front of ZFS besides obvious data implications (single copy v.s. multiple).
- geerlingguy 5y ago
  I documented everything in excruciating detail in this GitHub issue [1] — but in summary it was RAID5 created by mdadm (to replicate what the Drivestor 4 Pro does via ADM—it doesn't have ZFS as an option), and bcache set up on top of that with an EXT4 filesystem. [1] https://github.com/geerlingguy/raspberry-pi-pcie-devices/issues/162 https://github.com/geerlingguy/raspberry-pi-pcie-devices/iss...
jmnicolas 5y ago
Frankly I'm fed up with pi's: they're not reliable at all for 24/7 uses cases. I have a PI 3 at work that needs frequent hard reboots because it fails to read the USB peripheral it's connected to. I also have half dozen PI 4 connected to big screens, that randomly fail to show anything (black screen). They need several hard reboot to get back to work. My boss wasn't convinced that it was the pis fault. To prove it, I just connected an old PC tower on one of the screen: this setup never caused any problem in months.
- Hamuko 5y ago
  I have a Raspberry Pi running Wireguard that's pretty reliable - but it's really just running Wireguard.
- zozbot234 5y ago
  You're probably using an unreliable power supply. Use something official, and put any USB peripherals on a separately powered hub.
  - riedel 5y ago
    Interesting to see that the raspi foundation is in the business of PSU certification. It kind of weirdly feels like the next gen Apple...
  - jmnicolas 5y ago
    They all run with the official power supply.
    - magicalhippo 5y ago
      Are you using official cables too? Cause all my Pi instabilities have come from power supply issues, and in all cases the problem was actually due to crappy cables. I bought a cheap USB cable tester[1] from AliExpress and ended up throwing away half my cables. [1]: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32973869742.html https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32973869742.html (random store, feel free to find another)
KronisLV 5y ago
You know, i think that ARM is really good for personal computing! However, right now i'm planning on adding more HDDs to my current homelab, which is made of low power last gen x86 hardware, but even so just 2 boxes with 200 GEs inside currently pull around 100W in total from the wall (PSUs are probably not awfully efficient either, to be honest). That said, having PCI lanes does keep me hopeful - while i have 4 SATA ports on the mobo, expansion cards could bring that number up pretty nicely. I reckon that i could have about 8 HDDs in each box on consumer hardware with few to no issues, while also using them as servers with ~32 GB of RAM for my container clusters. If i had to start over, would i go for a Raspberry Pi or an equivalent cluster, or maybe a dedicated NAS? Maybe, as long as ARM software isn't too hard to come across, and the limited RAM or other expandability doesn't become too much of a problem.
nonbirithm 5y ago
I bought a Pi 4 with the intention of using it as a services box for a Synology NAS, but it turns out that hosting a Postgres cluster over the network isn't a good idea. I've since moved the data onto an SSD directly connected to the Pi and use the NAS purely as a backup mechanism, which I guess was the point of having a NAS to begin with. I get the impression that trying to run things directly on the NAS is cumbersome with Synology's OS.

131 points by geerlingguy 5y ago

After watching Geerling's video on YouTube about building an ARM NAS I almost went that direction -- but opted for a Synology DS918+ instead because my need for a NAS is not just experimental but something that needs to work reliably.

Lownin 5y ago
What happens when the Sinology dies? Do I have to buy another Synology to mount my array again? Does it have to be the same model, or family of models?
- mikece 5y ago
  I haven't tried pulling one of the drives from my system and trying to read it with another box but I imagine just about any Linux system should be able to read BTRFS drives, no? Under the covers Synology's DSM is Linux with some proprietary apps on top.
  - geerlingguy 5y ago
    Yeah I know at least ASUSTOR's ADM and Synology's DSM are both basically lightweight Linux distros (usually on an older kernel than what you'd expect building something custom), and they use standard Linux storage tooling (for mdadm RAID or btrfs).
- geerlingguy 5y ago
  I haven't tested it on Synology, but at least on ASUSTOR, the RAID arrays are set up using mdadm internally—so I was able to pull the drives, plug them into a Pi through a SATA card, and recover the array pretty easily using mdadm. The vendor NASes do seem to add extra partitions besides just one main 'md0', though—so you probably couldn't expect to yank the drives from a Synology and pop them into an ASUSTOR directly. I also tested pulling drives configured in the Drivestor and putting them in the Lockerstor, and that worked, but there were quirks if I tried in the opposite direction. In the end, I would rather make sure I have a complete/separate backup of the NAS before attempting to move the drives, just in case.
- aparks517 5y ago
  I'd lean toward restoring from backup either way, since the hardware failure might have caused data corruption that's not immediately obvious.
- psz 5y ago
  Yeah. You can pull drives out and mount them in regular Linux. Synology uses standard Linux tools. https://kb.synology.com/DSM/tutorial/How_can_I_recover_data_from_my_DiskStation_using_a_PC https://kb.synology.com/DSM/tutorial/How_can_I_recover_data_...
timbit42 5y ago
What do you think about Synology only allowing their rebranded Toshiba drives to work in their NAS? That's a deal breaker for me. EDIT: Source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29596179 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29596179
- kencausey 5y ago
  Where did you get that idea? Below are links to Synology acknowledged compatible drives with multiple brands and even that doesn't imply that only these will work: https://www.synology.com/en-us/compatibility?search_by=products&model=DS918%2B&category=hdds_no_ssd_trim&p=1&change_log_p=1 https://www.synology.com/en-us/compatibility?search_by=produ... https://www.synology.com/en-us/compatibility?search_by=products&model=DS918%2B&category=m2_ssd_internal&p=1&change_log_p=1 https://www.synology.com/en-us/compatibility?search_by=produ...
  - johngalt 5y ago
    That's a Synology released four years ago. Contrast with a model released in February this year. Not a single drive non-Synology drive on the HCL larger than 4TB: https://www.synology.com/en-us/compatibility?search_by=products&model=RS2421RP%2B&category=hdds_no_ssd_trim&p=1&change_log_p=1 https://www.synology.com/en-us/compatibility?search_by=produ... It's not a hard requirement to use Synology drives, but on the newer/higher-end models the options to not use Synology drives are very limited. For example the FS2500 only has four models of SSD on the HCL and two are Synology. IMHO, the price premium for the Synology branded drives is reasonable. Pay for the validated drives. Maintaining a broad HCL is no small task. https://blog.synology.com/in-pursuit-of-reliability-hat5300-enterprise-hard-drives https://blog.synology.com/in-pursuit-of-reliability-hat5300-...
- sigjuice 5y ago
  Is there a specific Synology NAS model with this restriction? I happen to have Western Digital drives in my Synology DS920+.
  - timbit42 5y ago
zerkten 5y ago
You are right that Synology (or an equivalent appliance) is often best. It's more complicated for geeks and data hoarders once we've been using a Synology for a while. When people go down the Synology path they are often running apps and doing more than providing a big pool of storage. I'm finding that my needs have changed towards my NAS being only a pool of storage on my local network. It is there as the first tier of backups to speed up disaster recovery. I feel confident that I could move to a more DIY NAS solution because it would only be used for NAS storage. It's not ideal, but an old desktop is now much better for my app needs, including Plex. Ideally, I'd have a single app box with the power consumption of 4-5 Raspberry Pi. I have only found a couple of ARM server solutions which are fairly old and ARM doesn't have standard sockets etc. because the focus seems to be on SoC instead of replicating what I'm used to with PCs and ATX mobos.
- solarkraft 5y ago
  I have used an ARM Synology NAS but found it highly inadequate for running services ... or anything but basic storage, really. Only the x86 models support running Linux containers, packaging an application for Synology didn't exactly seem easy to to and the UI is almost unusably sluggish and has super confusing UX (it emulates a desktop environment in the browser ... right, very cool). Running an own standard Linux-based NAS is more effort, but not terribly so. The additional flexibility may be worth it: It makes it quite painless to integrate with other data sources and sinks for backups and stuff and can run a lot of personal services (home automation, budgeting tool, IRC bouncer ...).
  - tyingq 5y ago
    There seemed to be change on their low-end stuff when the DS120j/220j came out. The processor and RAM finally seemed enough to not spin off into oblivion, if you avoided the software that catalogs image files. They are dual-core, 512MB RAM, where the previous DS110j was single core, 128MB RAM and the DS115j was single core, 256MB RAM. The previous models just ran way too close to CPU starvation or swapping hell.
- Helmut10001 5y ago
Terry_Roll 5y ago
And I use pi's as interchangeable/swappable processors for a variety of different tasks. Its only casing which people tend to miss with pi's which can be addressed with 3d printing.
Hamuko 5y ago
My Synology has been anything but realiable in the past month or so. I've twice had to hard reboot it because it stops working. I think it stops writing all data, which means that even something as simepl as "echo "" > out" will hang forever. Can't even turn it off because DSM stops responding and "sudo reboot" hangs. I have no idea whether it's a disk going bad, the file system going bad or the entire device going bad. It did give a warning that an I/O command timed out on one of the disks, but I've yet to get a S.M.A.R.T. extended test completed on the disk.
- no_time 5y ago
  Does it hang with ssh timing out? In that case, next time it hangs try opening it up and logging in via the UART interface available on most Synology NASes. Also it may give you extra info if the kernel panicks.
  - Hamuko 5y ago
    No, it's usually just the individual command that hangs. I'm pretty sure I could just ^C end the `echo "" > out` command.
hackshack 5y ago
I agonized about this for years. I wanted a proper server, not something embedded or a Pi with a rat's nest of cables, that would still fit in a credenza in the living room. Ended up getting an HP MicroServer Gen8 and absolutely love it. Same cube design as the DS918+, but with proper iLO (remote media, etc.), lots of boot options, and very stoutly built. It feels like a real HP DL300-series server (the Gen9 does not IMHO). I bought it as it was being discontinued. It's running VMware ESXi with FreeNAS on top of that, with an LSI SAS card connected to the drive bays, then hardware-pass-through'ed to the FreeNAS VM. I've got the home's DNS server, Pi-hole, Unifi controller, test VMs, etc. happily virtualized alongside FreeNAS. 16GB RAM total, with 8GB dedicated to FreeNAS. Boot is off a microSD card (on the motherboard, naturally) and VM datastore is on an SSD connected where the optical drive would go. I know I'm violating several recommendations here (low RAM, virtualized FreeNAS, SAS card passed through, etc. etc.) but it does indeed work, very well in fact. 2+ years of serving the home. With the Gen8, HP built almost the perfect home server for tech-oriented types... pity they cost-reduced its successor.
- abrookewood 5y ago
  Yep, I did the same, though currently running on a much older version. Ubuntu, ZFS and a bunch of mirrored drives. The thing has been rock solid for years.
- lukeh 5y ago
  Yeah, doing the same, albeit with Solaris (probably a dumb choice but at the time, wanted stable ZFS).

lunfard000 5y ago

Raspberry is not really cheap anymore. The start package (rp4 4gb + charger + sd + ethernet/hdmi cables) is 100 euros in my country. Meanwhile you can get a GK3V mini pc on Aliexpress with a j4125, 8gb LPDDR4 and 256GB SSD for 180 euros, which probably has 3x-4x the performance of the pi.

justin66 5y ago
That's quite a markup you're experiencing. A conversion based on US prices makes it seem like you should be able to get that stuff for a little more than sixty Euros. If you can get it at all: availability is tough right now all over, I assume. Is that price difference about shipping costs or VAT or what? > GK3V mini pc That is a very cool looking thing, but targeting a different use case, I would think.
- lunfard000 5y ago
  idk, maybe you get it a bit cheaper if you look around. This is from a offical store though: https://www.raspberrystore.nl/PrestaShop/complete-sets/245-raspberry-pi-4-starter-pack-2019-4gb-8718734751502.html https://www.raspberrystore.nl/PrestaShop/complete-sets/245-r...
  - wila 5y ago
    It's the rest of the kit that makes it expensive. If you don't need all the parts, then you can shave some off. https://www.kiwi-electronics.nl/nl/merk-raspberry-pi https://www.kiwi-electronics.nl/nl/merk-raspberry-pi
    - lunfard000 5y ago
      I mean, at the very least you always need a charger and a sd card, the barebone price is kinda misleading
      - wila 5y ago

moondev 5y ago

Compare this to another aarch64 system, honeycomb lx2 esxi for arm on the lx2 now supports pcie passthru of it's PCIe3.0 x8 slot. I successfully passed the nvme controller and a 25GbE port from a ConnectX-4 into an ubuntu 21.10 uefi aarch64 vm Linux chad-SolidRun-CEX7-Platform 5.13.0-22-generic #22-Ubuntu SMP Fri Nov 5 13:22:27 UTC 2021 aarch64 aarch64 aarch64 GNU/Linux 02:00.0 Non-Volatile memory controller: Samsung Electronics Co Ltd NVMe SSD Controller SM981/PM981/PM983 (prog-if 02 [NVM Express]) Subsystem: Samsung Electronics Co Ltd NVMe SSD Controller SM981/PM981/PM983 0a:00.0 Ethernet controller: Mellanox Technologies MT27710 Family [ConnectX-4 Lx] Subsystem: Mellanox Technologies Stand-up ConnectX-4 Lx EN, 25GbE dual-port SFP28, PCIe3.0 x8, MCX4121A-ACAT

geerlingguy 5y ago
I've been wanting to test out one of Solid Run's boards, but haven't had the opportunity. Have you done any benchmarking to see how much throughput you actually get? I would hope it's a lot more than the Pi, but can't know until it's thoroughly tested! One thing to note: the Honeycomb LX2 is listed at $750 :)
- moondev 5y ago
  Planning to benchmark it a bit later today, thanks for sharing your scripts I will start there and share with you via gh. Also happy to report GPU + audio fully working on ubuntu 21.10 aarch64-uefi. GPU is nvidia gt710 in the pcie3x8 slot via nouveau drivers. May take a crack at some unigine benchmarks later :)
  - geerlingguy 5y ago
    Excellent! I may have to find a way to get one...
zamadatix 5y ago
At $750 without memory, storage, or case and only offering a x8 PCIe 3.0 slot it seems to lose the advantage of being cheap while still being worse than a non-ARM64 box in terms of interfaces (and likely performance).

quux 5y ago

Link to youtube version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3jwQzb46Zc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3jwQzb46Zc

karmicthreat 5y ago

I bought a Synology not for the hardware, but the software. I went down the FreeNAS/TrueNAS rabbithole before. But it's a pain and the Synology software lets me get things setup easier.

yumraj 5y ago
I was thinking of going the other way, from synology to TrueNas Scale since is Linux based. Are you suggesting that that’s a fool’s errand and I shouldn’t do that?
- karmicthreat 5y ago
  It just depends on how much effort you want to put into it. I'm a software engineer, not an IT person. Most of the value I generate is related to writing software. So when we needed a shared NAS for the company I setup a FreeNAS server. Got a used ebay rack server and put it on there. Worked just ok, just had to keep tweaking stuff with it, the UI kind of sucked, used ebay servers are crap hardware and fail, etc. Got a Synology had it up and running in an hour and I was pretty much done. Every 6 months I take a look at it or add a user if I need to. But it pretty much takes care of itself and I don't worry about it. It emails me every sunday with its status and I call it good. I can keep doing the actual productive parts of my job.

FpUser 5y ago

Pi 4 is unobtanium now. One of my projects is screwed at the moment because of that

rcpt 5y ago
What do you need the pi for? The size? Intel NUC is substantially more powerful and after power bank, SD, case etc you end up paying about the same
- FpUser 5y ago
  I am well aware about NUCs. I do not really want to talk here why I need Pi in particular. I am however amazed at how easily people here make whole bunch of assumptions that have nothing to do with the actual case.
- magicalhippo 5y ago
  OTOH if you need the GPIO, power consumption or form factor it's hard to beat a Pi. They're not the best on power, but they're better than a NUC.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

liuliu 5y ago

@geerlingguy, in the post, do you use RAID5 as in madam or RAIDZ1 as in ZFS? Is this bcache setup in front of madam or ZFS? I am actually interested in hearing downsides if bcache used in front of ZFS besides obvious data implications (single copy v.s. multiple).

geerlingguy 5y ago
I documented everything in excruciating detail in this GitHub issue [1] — but in summary it was RAID5 created by mdadm (to replicate what the Drivestor 4 Pro does via ADM—it doesn't have ZFS as an option), and bcache set up on top of that with an EXT4 filesystem. [1] https://github.com/geerlingguy/raspberry-pi-pcie-devices/issues/162 https://github.com/geerlingguy/raspberry-pi-pcie-devices/iss...

jmnicolas 5y ago

Frankly I'm fed up with pi's: they're not reliable at all for 24/7 uses cases. I have a PI 3 at work that needs frequent hard reboots because it fails to read the USB peripheral it's connected to. I also have half dozen PI 4 connected to big screens, that randomly fail to show anything (black screen). They need several hard reboot to get back to work. My boss wasn't convinced that it was the pis fault. To prove it, I just connected an old PC tower on one of the screen: this setup never caused any problem in months.

Hamuko 5y ago
I have a Raspberry Pi running Wireguard that's pretty reliable - but it's really just running Wireguard.
zozbot234 5y ago
You're probably using an unreliable power supply. Use something official, and put any USB peripherals on a separately powered hub.
- riedel 5y ago
  Interesting to see that the raspi foundation is in the business of PSU certification. It kind of weirdly feels like the next gen Apple...
- jmnicolas 5y ago
  They all run with the official power supply.
  - magicalhippo 5y ago
    Are you using official cables too? Cause all my Pi instabilities have come from power supply issues, and in all cases the problem was actually due to crappy cables. I bought a cheap USB cable tester[1] from AliExpress and ended up throwing away half my cables. [1]: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32973869742.html https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32973869742.html (random store, feel free to find another)

KronisLV 5y ago

You know, i think that ARM is really good for personal computing! However, right now i'm planning on adding more HDDs to my current homelab, which is made of low power last gen x86 hardware, but even so just 2 boxes with 200 GEs inside currently pull around 100W in total from the wall (PSUs are probably not awfully efficient either, to be honest). That said, having PCI lanes does keep me hopeful - while i have 4 SATA ports on the mobo, expansion cards could bring that number up pretty nicely. I reckon that i could have about 8 HDDs in each box on consumer hardware with few to no issues, while also using them as servers with ~32 GB of RAM for my container clusters. If i had to start over, would i go for a Raspberry Pi or an equivalent cluster, or maybe a dedicated NAS? Maybe, as long as ARM software isn't too hard to come across, and the limited RAM or other expandability doesn't become too much of a problem.

nonbirithm 5y ago

I bought a Pi 4 with the intention of using it as a services box for a Synology NAS, but it turns out that hosting a Postgres cluster over the network isn't a good idea. I've since moved the data onto an SSD directly connected to the Pi and use the NAS purely as a backup mechanism, which I guess was the point of having a NAS to begin with. I get the impression that trying to run things directly on the NAS is cumbersome with Synology's OS.