5 ms·

I was one of those guys that hosted nearly everything on a bunch of Pis. While it was fun initially, I eventually got frustrated. Yeah, self-hosting stuff is fu

by M0r13n 4y ago

I was one of those guys that hosted nearly everything on a bunch of Pis. While it was fun initially, I eventually got frustrated. Yeah, self-hosting stuff is fun'n games. But sadly things do break, SD cards fail, hardware dies and backups do not work. Personally, I am only hosting a few important services locally. These services are one hundred percent automated and can be deployed in minutes. For everything else I pay someone else to host it or I got rid of it entirely. That does not mean that it isn't a great hobby. I just found myself investing may too much time for a small benefit. Also, I think that I did not learn anything new by preparing the sixth Pi or running some Playbook/Dockerfile/Installer that someone else has written

BrianHenryIE 4y ago
> SD cards fail I came here to say the same thing. I'm in the process of migrating to an SSD because I've had two SD failures. I picked up a Samsung 850 250GB for $25 on eBay and need to buy a USB cable for ~$25. So it's a little more expensive than just buying an SD card, but comparable to buying a few SD cards!
- traceroute66 4y ago
  > need to buy a USB cable Hmm... Replacing the perils of an SD card with the perils of relying on a USB cable connection ? Anybody who's been in IT long enough will know inadvertent USB disconnects happen.
  - e3bc54b2 4y ago
    A Raspberry Pi sitting cupboard silently chugging along has a high chance of SD failure, but little chance of inadvertant disconnects. That's a fine tradeoff I'd say.
  - sgt 4y ago
    I have a few Pi's like that. I've literally zip-tied the drive onto the Pi's case.
creativenolo 4y ago
I agree. Setting them up in your spare time is fun. But they tend to break out with your spare time. Even so with the non-self hosted stuff.
wintersFright 4y ago
SD cards definitely fail but USB ssd is rock solid from personal experience.
m463 4y ago
In my experience on a pi - SD cards don't fail, they get corrupted. one solution is to use an OS that isn't constantly writing to the SD card, like openwrt. I have a pi running openwrt and it is rock solid. The filesystem only gets written in very specific cases, for example there are no logs writing to the sd card continuously. Another solution is to set up an overlay filesystem for raspbian And you could use a USB drive like a samsung fit instead - that has been very solid for me.
moepstar 4y ago
In my experience, i have only had 1 corrupted SD card yet - after running about 5 Pis any given time for a few years now, starting with a 2b iirc... Running HA, Pi-Hole, OpenVPN, solaranzeige.de, piVCCU, piCorePlayer, BirdNET-Pi, OctoPi/Klipper (2x), Pi1541 etc... No. single. failure. yet. The corrupted SD card had me baffled for a while as randomly some binaries would get corrupted (like php, which would throw random errors, files of a Grafana install would end up in lost+found) - the cause? Me, using a spare Apple iPhone charger (1A) to power the Pi - haven't had an adequate power supply around at that time.. As a rule, i use 5V PS with at least 2.5A with the Pis and (almost) never had issues like the Raspys complaining with that rainbow colored box (or "vcgencmd get_throttled")... So, yes, getting a good power supply (well, one that can supply 2.5A++ - if these are really good (as in "noise free") is another matter, which i've discovered with my BirdNET-Pi now) is key for the longevity of your SD card!
benttoothpaste 4y ago
For me a RPi lasts about a year on average, while an SD card lasts about a month.

by M0r13n 4y ago

BrianHenryIE 4y ago

> SD cards fail I came here to say the same thing. I'm in the process of migrating to an SSD because I've had two SD failures. I picked up a Samsung 850 250GB for $25 on eBay and need to buy a USB cable for ~$25. So it's a little more expensive than just buying an SD card, but comparable to buying a few SD cards!

traceroute66 4y ago
> need to buy a USB cable Hmm... Replacing the perils of an SD card with the perils of relying on a USB cable connection ? Anybody who's been in IT long enough will know inadvertent USB disconnects happen.
- e3bc54b2 4y ago
  A Raspberry Pi sitting cupboard silently chugging along has a high chance of SD failure, but little chance of inadvertant disconnects. That's a fine tradeoff I'd say.
- sgt 4y ago
  I have a few Pi's like that. I've literally zip-tied the drive onto the Pi's case.

creativenolo 4y ago

I agree. Setting them up in your spare time is fun. But they tend to break out with your spare time. Even so with the non-self hosted stuff.

wintersFright 4y ago

SD cards definitely fail but USB ssd is rock solid from personal experience.

m463 4y ago

In my experience on a pi - SD cards don't fail, they get corrupted. one solution is to use an OS that isn't constantly writing to the SD card, like openwrt. I have a pi running openwrt and it is rock solid. The filesystem only gets written in very specific cases, for example there are no logs writing to the sd card continuously. Another solution is to set up an overlay filesystem for raspbian And you could use a USB drive like a samsung fit instead - that has been very solid for me.

moepstar 4y ago

In my experience, i have only had 1 corrupted SD card yet - after running about 5 Pis any given time for a few years now, starting with a 2b iirc... Running HA, Pi-Hole, OpenVPN, solaranzeige.de, piVCCU, piCorePlayer, BirdNET-Pi, OctoPi/Klipper (2x), Pi1541 etc... No. single. failure. yet. The corrupted SD card had me baffled for a while as randomly some binaries would get corrupted (like php, which would throw random errors, files of a Grafana install would end up in lost+found) - the cause? Me, using a spare Apple iPhone charger (1A) to power the Pi - haven't had an adequate power supply around at that time.. As a rule, i use 5V PS with at least 2.5A with the Pis and (almost) never had issues like the Raspys complaining with that rainbow colored box (or "vcgencmd get_throttled")... So, yes, getting a good power supply (well, one that can supply 2.5A++ - if these are really good (as in "noise free") is another matter, which i've discovered with my BirdNET-Pi now) is key for the longevity of your SD card!

benttoothpaste 4y ago

For me a RPi lasts about a year on average, while an SD card lasts about a month.