Good day, friends. Since catching the self-hosting bug, I’ve set up a couple of Proxmox home servers with a bunch of services I enjoy.
Now I’d like to set up a server and local network on my sailboat so I can self-host servarr, pihole, and other services while traveling. The tricky part is that everything on the boat is 12V and I would rather not use an inverter, if possible. Also, it needs to be ultra-low power so I can leave it on at all times and not to deplete my batteries too much.
Criteria:
- ultra-low power
- Small form factor
- runs on 12V
- 10 TB of storage plus ability to make full local backup
- Capable of hosting servarr, audiobookshelf, freshrss, etc. via docker
- HDMI output
- Full local mirror/backup of the entire file system, including the media library.
- We will have two laptops and two Android phones to access the server, so the server doesn’t need to run a desktop environment.
I’ll have a mobile wifi router and a cellular signal booster (or maybe Starlink eventually) for internet access. Since internet bandwidth will be limited and expensive while traveling, I don’t want to have to re-download a massive media llibrary if the storage media fail. Thus, I want the media library to be mirrored or fully backed up or synced locally.
What hardware and Linux distro would you use in this situation?
Don’t forget to think about how to keep the salt air from corroding the electronics. Either build a spare or two that you keep sealed in plastic, or find an airtight case with an integrated heat sink or something.
Edit: you might want to look into conformal coating and dielectric grease (for the connectors) as well, although I don’t know enough about that to competently give advice beyond the mere suggestion.
For hardware I recommend this guy to everyone: CWWK N100 mini PC w/ 4xNVMe hat
Get 4x4TB NVMe drives and you’ll have 12TB usable storage + parity drive.
It also uses a 12V power supply.
Relying on 4 nvme drive for low power isn’t ideal as nvme drive needs about twice more power compare to sata SSD.
I’d recommend avoiding spinning disks and going all ssd if possible.
You can get 12v in atx power supplies.
You may want to consider something like a Lenovo tiny with a few large ssds.
This sounds like a job for a raspberry pi 5 with an m.2 hat for storage, software is a less important choice here, so ubuntu’s raspberry pi flavour would be my choice. Just make sure you give it power in a form it likes.
I just got an email about a new power supply board for the rpi5 - PD Power Extension Board for Raspberry Pi 5. It’s on their pihut website and is $20. Has multiple input types.
Your best bet might be to use a laptop as the basis. They are already designed with power efficiency in mind, and you won’t need an external screen and keyboard for local problem solving.
I would also consider having a raspberry pi 3 or similar as a companion. Services that must be up all the time run on the pi (e.g. network admin). The main computer only gets kicked out of sleep mode when required. The pi 3 needs less power than the newer pis, while still having enough computing power to not lag unless pushed hard.
I definitely agree with SSDs. HDDs don’t do well when rotated when running. Boats are less than a stable platform.
This is a good idea. A modern laptop is already power efficient and has its own battery, which I guess would act like a UPS and protect the motherboard from big swings in voltage from the main battery bank.
I would get a laptop as well in that situation. Just make sure it is one that supports setting the charging threshold. Having it on all the time will kill the battery quickly if it keeps charging from 95 to 100%. It’s much better to keep it below 80%, which should still give enough “UPS time”.
The battery will also not electrically protect the motherboard from voltage swings. So get a good power adapter that can handle the voltages.
HDDs don’t do well when rotated
The original iPod had an HDD in it. You can rotate HDDs. Sharp impacts may be risky though, especially for a non-laptop drive.
