Best things to host on a raspberry pi
Hey yall, I want to get into self-hosting. I want to start from hosting on a raspberry pi, and I am just wondering if yall have any recommendations (I've never hosted anything before, but have experience in linux and programming). Sorry if it's bit of a stupid question.
For the cost of a rpi, just get actually capable hardware. Once you actually get anything running you'll wish you had real hardware.
I've been leaning this way lately. From a cost/capability standpoint, RPis were easy to justify when they were ~$30, but not as much at their current inflated prices unless you have specific power consumption and form factor requirements. Used/refurbished Dell thin clients and MFF PCs can be had for $40-100, ranging from fanless systems with low-power Atoms and Celerons to full-fledged desktops with Core i-series CPUs, all with memory and storage included more often than not. I personally just picked up a Dell OptiPlex MFF with an i5-9500T, 8GB RAM, and 256GB SSD for $100.
What kind of hardware, with a similar price point to the rpi, do you think of?
This reminds me of the old "build a gaming pc for less than a console" thing was popular for a while.
So let's assume a $90 raspberry pi (someone really splurged here)
You can drop the case and just use a cardboard box, which would allow you to afford storage. I'm just going to assume you boot from a usb and keep everything in memory.
Pihole is a good start, though I personally use my Pi 3B+ for printer server over WiFi since I have a dumb Epson printer.
I'm hosting https://www.home-assistant.io/ on raspberry pi's.
honestly it is good to start with and for controlling machines like an array of 3d printers but a dumpster dive laptop will be faster. RPI4 is quite old now.
with that done:
jellyfin
How good is the performance of that on a rpi4? Does it work for transcoding videos?
Pihole is easy and light enough. I used to host Transmission (transmission-daemon) on a 3B+ and it worked alright for seeding around 300-500 torrents. FreshRSS also worked alongside.
My list for my raspberry pi 4 (4 GB):
I have 2 rpis and I have had running many things. Pihole, Wireguard, deluge, etc... One problem that I had is that it corrupted all my SD cards after some time. So I have them now collecting dust, and move all my services to real machines. It could be that I'm unlucky and got shitty SD cards, but I wouldn't want to install something on it that I rely to be there in case you need to reimage the whole thing.
AFAIK SD cards often die in RPis due to excessive writing (e.g. from logging), insufficient power supplies, and/or powering off improperly.
One suggestion might be to load a Debian build on it and use it for docker containers. With docker containers you can do so many different things. I have a PI 4 and it does all of the following:
PiHole - For blocking ads. (Everyone should have one of these)
OpenMediaVault - For NAS
Portainers - For loading docker containers
Radarr - Downloading Movies
Sonarr - Downloading TV Shows
Tautulli - Monitors my plex server
Overseer - Allows members of my plex share to request content.
NZBGET and Real-Debrid Torrent Downloader Clients - For downloading content from usenet or real-debrid.
I have one Pi4 running all of these as docker containers. Have fun!
Seconding - you can actually squeeze a surprising amount of use out of a Pi4 running Docker.
You could install docker and pihole + 2 dns resolvers -- which saves you money considering you can't do that via "standard" installation methods.