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Raspberry Pi Colocation

pi-colocation.com

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Re: Raspberry Pi Colocation

#51

Post by xg15 »

wpietri wrote: post #44
solarkraft wrote: post #26

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…

But at least in your case, people could put their own machines in there. You wouldn't have rented out mac minis as dedicated servers, would you?

Edit: Ah, misread the article. Alright, then what you did was indeed pretty similar.

Re: Raspberry Pi Colocation

#52

Post by SahAssar »

glenneroo wrote: post #46
solarkraft wrote: post #26

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.

They don't give you a dedicated public IP, and only 10Mbit bandwidth.

Re: Raspberry Pi Colocation

#53

Post by hellojesus »

glenneroo wrote: post #46
solarkraft wrote: post #26

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.

I fix this by running a script on a cron job that updates dns records based on my current ip, using cloudfront to only allow known ips through my ufw rules. It doesn't work for 100% uptime, but I've never had an instance where visiting my domain failed.

It may not work if you're running a tor node, depending on how cloudfront deals with them, but it does work for mostly-reliable dns resolution on a non-static, residential isp connection.

Not negating the project, just offering an alternative for people that want a static ip without renting vps/metal and without the isp static upcharge.

Re: Raspberry Pi Colocation

#54

Post by wpietri »

xg15 wrote: post #51
wpietri wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

But at least in your case, people could put their own machines in there. You wouldn't have rented out mac minis as dedicated servers, would you? Edit: Ah, misread the article. Alright, then what you did was indeed pretty similar.

Yeah, ours was still a bit different, in that we just provided a shelf where you could plug your gear in. But it seems like the same principle.

Re: Raspberry Pi Colocation

#55

Post by xg15 »

glenneroo wrote: post #46
solarkraft wrote: post #26

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.

Note that the IP address is shared with other PIs and there are restrictions on which ports you can use: https://examesh.de/en/docs/colocation/accessing-the-pi/

Re: Raspberry Pi Colocation

#56

Post by gurchik »

frankjr wrote: 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 would recommend Racknerd as well. Not affiliated with them except a happy customer. I pay $36/yr for my 2 GB memory, 2 vCPU, 50 GB SSD VPS that I run Nextcloud on. I also have a $16/yr VPS with 1.5 GB memory and 30 GB SSD for K3s

Re: Raspberry Pi Colocation

#57

Post by Sebb767 »

solarkraft wrote: post #26

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…

Next to the other arguments, the colocation is pretty cheap. In Germany, you can calculate ~20ct per Wattmonth for electricity, so ~1€ of this would go to electricity alone. Hosting at home also tends to come without static IP and non-symmetrical, somewhat unstable connections (speaking from painful experience).

For this service you pay ~6€ per month (assuming 50€ for the Pi and two years of runtime, no SSD) for a rather powerful VM. Just as a comparison, at Linode, you get 1 shared CPU and 1G of RAM for roughly the same price, compared to 4 core and 4-8 gigs with the Pi. Storage is even more expensive, so if you attach a large SSD, the calculation becomes even better (but the 10Mbit might become a bottleneck quickly).

[0] https://www.linode.com/products/shared/

Re: Raspberry Pi Colocation

#59

Post by aofeisheng »

> What is the traffic limit?

> It's 2021. We don't have a traffic limit for a Raspberry Pi.

> What is the data transfer rate?

> The data rate is synchronously set to 10 Mbit/s per Raspberry.

It's 2021, and you think 10 Mbit/s is enough.

Re: Raspberry Pi Colocation

#60

Post by ed25519FUUU »

HideousKojima wrote: post #43
sokoloff wrote: 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.

It looks like they have a custom built rack for the Pi, so supplying a custom 5v rail probably wouldn’t be hard at all and would almost certainly be cheaper than large deployments of PoE switches.
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