Latest RAM worth hikes apart, single-board computer systems are so cheap nowadays that it’s laborious to keep away from shopping for a stack of them to show right into a homelab. Geek Of All Trades is aware of this sense, and has performed precisely that. However fairly than simply shopping for a bunch of boards and stuffing them on the nook of a desk, he has demonstrated how we are able to make a extra skilled — and helpful — homelab from tiny computer systems.
Geek Of All Trades has been working with a Sipeed NanoCluster, which may rack as much as seven Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 or 5 boards, or Sipeed’s personal 3H or M4N modules. Board sorts may be combined, and every is able to internet hosting its personal particular person NVMe drive for storage. Nodes are linked to an onboard managed change, which supplies exterior entry by way of a single gigabit Ethernet port. A fan is supplied for cooling, however Geek Of All Trades notes that it is extremely loud and no pace management is obtainable.
Establishing the cluster (📷: Geek Of All Trades)
For his personal homelab, Geek Of All Trades populated the NanoCluster with a set of 4 Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 boards, every with a 128GB NVMe drive. Proxmox was put in on the cluster with the assistance of the Pimox venture, as Proxmox itself doesn’t assist ARM chips. This software program ran on prime of Raspberry Pi OS Lite.
To display what is feasible with a cluster like this, every node was given a distinct objective. One ran a Pi-hole container, whereas the others ran NGINX, N8N, and Grafana. In fact these purposes may be tailor-made to every particular person’s wants.
However what’s a tiny cluster like this actually good for? Effectively, a number of issues. Geek Of All Trades notes that it’s particularly well-suited for testing multi-node Docker setups, failover testing, experimenting with load balancing, and putting in techniques like Kubernetes. Edge computing purposes are additionally supreme given the tiny footprint and minimal energy consumption of the cluster.
Geek Of All Trades has loads of suggestions for these all for constructing their very own NanoCluster, so remember to take a look at the video beneath.
