So... been looking at expanding the home network a bit this year. Probably going to get a small NAS (been a while), and also hoping to start self-hosting a few things. Anticipating very light usage - me, the wife, maybe a few family members around holidays, etc. Never attempted (yet) running all the usual self-hosting / media applications yet, so I have little idea what I will eventually decide I want to really do with this setup, beyond backup storage / NVR with the NAS.
I had been leaning towards going the RPi4 route - already have a handful of various models for different things (B & B+ set up with `pihole` + `unbound`, and a 3B+ running Unifi controller and `pivpn`). Setting up a 4B+ for USB boot plus a USB storage drive using OMV5 seemed like an okay idea. More or less have already, just the 'storage drive' is a pretty old laptop 2.5" HDD in an old USB (BOT, not UASP) enclosure. Most of the devices on the home network *other* than the RPi's are connecting via wifi, thru a single Unifi Nano HD AP. I do have plans to run cat6 to the living/family areas, eventually.
It works... but reading about the Tiny-Mini-Micro project has me wondering if it might be a better idea to snag one of those off eBay, stuff as much RAM in it as it'll take, add some additional storage (internal if I can, external/attached if I can't) and benefit from the joys of Intel/AMD 64 bit architecture without the quirks of an RPi, while still enjoying lower power and noise (compared to anything bigger).
For this sort of thing... what kind of balance should I be looking for, as far as CPU, RAM and storage? Sounds like the memory and storage can be upgraded easily enough after the purchase; processor/video less so. At what point is adding extra RAM worth it (going from 8 to 16 GB) vs. gratuitous (bumping all the way up to 64 GB? Same for storage. Better to keep everything on a share on the NAS, or have a local attached drive, and just backup to the NAS?
Thanks,
Monte
I had been leaning towards going the RPi4 route - already have a handful of various models for different things (B & B+ set up with `pihole` + `unbound`, and a 3B+ running Unifi controller and `pivpn`). Setting up a 4B+ for USB boot plus a USB storage drive using OMV5 seemed like an okay idea. More or less have already, just the 'storage drive' is a pretty old laptop 2.5" HDD in an old USB (BOT, not UASP) enclosure. Most of the devices on the home network *other* than the RPi's are connecting via wifi, thru a single Unifi Nano HD AP. I do have plans to run cat6 to the living/family areas, eventually.
It works... but reading about the Tiny-Mini-Micro project has me wondering if it might be a better idea to snag one of those off eBay, stuff as much RAM in it as it'll take, add some additional storage (internal if I can, external/attached if I can't) and benefit from the joys of Intel/AMD 64 bit architecture without the quirks of an RPi, while still enjoying lower power and noise (compared to anything bigger).
For this sort of thing... what kind of balance should I be looking for, as far as CPU, RAM and storage? Sounds like the memory and storage can be upgraded easily enough after the purchase; processor/video less so. At what point is adding extra RAM worth it (going from 8 to 16 GB) vs. gratuitous (bumping all the way up to 64 GB? Same for storage. Better to keep everything on a share on the NAS, or have a local attached drive, and just backup to the NAS?
Thanks,
Monte
