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Raspberry Pi Colocation

pi-colocation.com

41–50 of 149 posts

Re: Raspberry Pi Colocation

#42
post #27

While I completely understand the allure of running on your own hardware, if you just want a cheap server to host a personal page or similar, you cannot beat Scaleway's Stardust VM instances. For less than 2 EUR a month you get 1 vCPU, 1 GB of RAM, 1 IPv4+IPv6 address, 10GB of storage and unlimited traffic. They claim up-to 100Mbps bandwidth but I regularly get much more than that. This sounds like a commercial but I…

I think local hardware makes sense for LAN-only sites - e.g. a company wiki, a media center or a file storage with web interface.

For anything that is supposed to be visible on the internet, I'd always use a hosted server - if nothing else, because I really don't want to open an ingress into my personal home network, even if my ISP permitted that.

For use-cases were you have to handle certain incoming requests even though your setup is mostly LAN-only otherwise (webhooks, ACME, adding some dashboard you can access from your phone...), services like PageKite[1] sound promising.

[1] http://pagekite.net/

Re: Raspberry Pi Colocation

#43
post #3

I know that co-location means “customer owned hardware”, but in this case, I think I’d way rather rent data center owned RPis and just pay them money rather than sending in hardware, having to cycle out hardware if/when it fails, etc. It also means the colo is running whatever random power supply I send them, which seems like something they’d want to avoid and means that there’s all the inefficiency of 12 supplies pe…

I've worked with a colo in the US that hosts Raspberry Pis and they required that you have a PoE hat, so no sending in a power supply.

Re: Raspberry Pi Colocation

#44

I'm gonna ask the dumb/obvious question: Why would I want this? It's certainly not for the compute. Isn't the point of a Raspberry Pi controlling periphery on the edge? But that's not possible here? ??? It's not even needing ARM cores, as those are now cheaply offered by all the cloud computing companies. Is it just for some cheap fun? But if I'm going to host something on cheap amateur grade hardware, why would I no…

For many years I was part of a bandwidth cooperative. We had a cabinet and a fat pipe and a bunch of sysadmins who wanted a place to keep their stuff. Early on it was all 1U or 2U systems. But later there was enough demand for Mac Minis that we dedicated a shelf to them.

It didn't make much sense from a professional syadmin's perspective. But for a Mac user who already had their little project on a Mini and wanted to get it off their home bandwidth, it made sense to them in that it was one simple, incremental change. I imagine the market here is similar.

Re: Raspberry Pi Colocation

#45

I'm gonna ask the dumb/obvious question: Why would I want this? It's certainly not for the compute. Isn't the point of a Raspberry Pi controlling periphery on the edge? But that's not possible here? ??? It's not even needing ARM cores, as those are now cheaply offered by all the cloud computing companies. Is it just for some cheap fun? But if I'm going to host something on cheap amateur grade hardware, why would I no…

You can attach a big ass SSD to this and still pay just $6 a month. This is unique I think.

I wonder how they would feel if you add your custom electronics to the Pi's GPIO connector.

Re: Raspberry Pi Colocation

#46

I'm gonna ask the dumb/obvious question: Why would I want this? It's certainly not for the compute. Isn't the point of a Raspberry Pi controlling periphery on the edge? But that's not possible here? ??? It's not even needing ARM cores, as those are now cheaply offered by all the cloud computing companies. Is it just for some cheap fun? But if I'm going to host something on cheap amateur grade hardware, why would I no…

Anything benefiting from a static IP address, such as running your own VPN, mail server, Bitcoin node, TOR node... the latter of which got me banned by my bank's security team because I was marked as "suspicious traffic" (wasn't even an exit node) - preventing me from using online banking. Talking to support proved fruitless, however the ban was lifted as soon as I changed my IP address.

Re: Raspberry Pi Colocation

#47
post #45

I'm gonna ask the dumb/obvious question: Why would I want this? It's certainly not for the compute. Isn't the point of a Raspberry Pi controlling periphery on the edge? But that's not possible here? ??? It's not even needing ARM cores, as those are now cheaply offered by all the cloud computing companies. Is it just for some cheap fun? But if I'm going to host something on cheap amateur grade hardware, why would I no…

You can attach a big ass SSD to this and still pay just $6 a month. This is unique I think. I wonder how they would feel if you add your custom electronics to the Pi's GPIO connector.

An RPI4 w/ SSD for $6 is probably the best compute for the buck right now in colo prices. This basically looks like a BYO hardware setup where they can maximize economics due to the RPI form factor being consistent.

I’d like to see the same thing but with a Mac mini.

Re: Raspberry Pi Colocation

#48
post #7

Somewhat ironically, I'd guess that putting a server inside a wind turbine makes it less likely that you are utilising green energy. The power and comms connections to that location are there primarily to monitor the turbine, and they want that to work all the time, and especially when the blades aren't turning. So you don't go powering it with the wind farm itself. Installing the server anywhere else means there is…

One could power the equipment off the turbine when it's operating, and off an alternative supply otherwise.

It seems a little silly to worry about where the specific electrons came from to power the equipment, though. If powering that equipment enables a wind turbine to produce more power than it would have without that equipment, then it seems like the existence of that equipment is "green" whether or not its power came from dirtier sources.

Re: Raspberry Pi Colocation

#50
post #3

I know that co-location means “customer owned hardware”, but in this case, I think I’d way rather rent data center owned RPis and just pay them money rather than sending in hardware, having to cycle out hardware if/when it fails, etc. It also means the colo is running whatever random power supply I send them, which seems like something they’d want to avoid and means that there’s all the inefficiency of 12 supplies pe…

I was hoping they'd have a DC power supply per rack, but their FAQ makes it clear that this is not the case. Bit of a missed opportunity there. Handling heterogeneous power supplies sounds like a nightmare.
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