Topic: Hardware/software recommendations for node/lightning/electrs/more (Read 442 times)

Thank you for the quick reply. As of now I'm debating in grabbing either a NUC featuring an i5 (8GB but 16GB would be ideal) or an apple mac mini (from 2012?) that would allow me to run the same batch of programs that you also planned in doing (if I don't end up going with the unraid route, which may happen).

I ended up sticking with what I know as I mentioned in this post because my list of things to try out is growing ever longer, so I scrubbed Umbrel from that list for now. I'm just using a second hand laptop I bought for cheap from a friend, and I'm only running bitcoin related stuff on it, and not the media server or any of the other non-bitcoin stuff I mentioned in my first post in this thread. That's also on my to do list, haha. It's running Debian.

You mentioned using Umbrel. Have you seen this recent debate about it[2]?

With the death of some old hardware I was using to run one of my nodes plus a few other bits and pieces, I've decided I'd quite like to simplify my always-on home hardware down to a single device.

With that in mind, I'm looking for both hardware and software recommendations for a standalone device capable of running the usual Bitcoin and Lightning nodes, but in addition to that, an Electrum server, an instance of mempool.space, a coinjoin server (be that JoinMarket or Samourai Dojo), and Bisq. I'd also like to potentially use this device to run a variety of non-bitcoin software, such as Pi-hole, personalized cloud storage, potentially a home media server, that sort of thing. Having looked in to it a bit, it seems that Umbrel might be the most straightforward way to do all this, and can run everything I've listed above except Bisq (although an app appears to be in the works).

My first question is whether anyone who has experience with this kind of thing would disagree about using Umbrel and would suggest just running something like Debian (or any other Linux distro)?

My second question is whether anyone could suggest some hardware which would be most appropriate for this. My main considerations are low power usage and being powerful enough to run everything I've listed above. I had originally looked at a Raspberry Pi 4, but I have some concerns about whether it could handle everything listed. At the moment I'm sort of considering the Orange Pi 5. I don't actually need it to be a single board computer at all - I'm just looking for energy efficiency with good enough hardware.

What do you mean by "an Umbrel"? Umbrel is software which can run on any device. I've not used it before but on reading about it seems like it would be perfect for my use case.

Is that including cache? If it is, it's normal: RAM is supposed to be used. If it's really used by all running programs, you need more RAM.

With the death of some old hardware I was using to run one of my nodes plus a few other bits and pieces, I've decided I'd quite like to simplify my always-on home hardware down to a single device.

With that in mind, I'm looking for both hardware and software recommendations for a standalone device capable of running the usual Bitcoin and Lightning nodes, but in addition to that, an Electrum server, an instance of mempool.space, a coinjoin server (be that JoinMarket or Samourai Dojo), and Bisq. I'd also like to potentially use this device to run a variety of non-bitcoin software, such as Pi-hole, personalized cloud storage, potentially a home media server, that sort of thing. Having looked in to it a bit, it seems that Umbrel might be the most straightforward way to do all this, and can run everything I've listed above except Bisq (although an app appears to be in the works).

My first question is whether anyone who has experience with this kind of thing would disagree about using Umbrel and would suggest just running something like Debian (or any other Linux distro)?

My second question is whether anyone could suggest some hardware which would be most appropriate for this. My main considerations are low power usage and being powerful enough to run everything I've listed above. I had originally looked at a Raspberry Pi 4, but I have some concerns about whether it could handle everything listed. At the moment I'm sort of considering the Orange Pi 5. I don't actually need it to be a single board computer at all - I'm just looking for energy efficiency with good enough hardware.

Starting with *I* use laptops for some crypro & node work.
Many of them do not like being run 24/7/365 the CPU fans are smaller, they in general have less cooling and so on.
Not saying that they can't do it, just that it's not optimal.

RAM usage sits at about 99% and never reaches 100% (which seems suspicious).

free -h
              total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
Mem:           15Gi       1.2Gi       174Mi       0.0Ki        14Gi        14Gi
Swap:         7.4Gi       456Mi

Becaus the CPU is maxing out only occasionally and because RAM is nearly at max, it seems to me that additional constant usage, such a media server, might become a problem, but additional intermittent usage would not.

Have you checked it's current resource consumption? I like gnome-system-monitor for a quick overview: if CPU and RAM aren't maxed out, it can probably handle more.

This is very useful, thank you. As I suspected, a Raspberry Pi would struggle to handle the additional non-bitcoin stuff I'm looking to run on it as well. What OS are you using on your Pi?

Hardware, you'll definitely need at least 16G for running all that, so that definitely rules out the Pi.

Definitely don't use an Umbrel either (unless it can meet the RAM and storage requirements), especially if you want to run a bunch of custom stuff.

I have a RPi 4 with 8GB RAM running core, lnd, electrs, joinmarket yg, and btc-rpc-explorer. It runs a little warm and sometimes it is slow. I'm not sure it can handle much more than that, but I would love to hear from others who have tested its limits.

How about Intel NUC Kit (NUC Kit means you buy and place your own RAM and HDD/SDD and)? If you choose NUC Kit with low-watt CPU (15W TDP), disable turbo boost, slightly undervolt/clock the CPU and choose energy efficiency RAM and HDD/SSD, i expect it could use 20W or less during high load. As bonus, you don't need to worry about finding software which run on ARM CPU.

Need more RAM for something with an SBC there is nothing you can do, with one of these micro PCs just buy another stick.

Pi 4 or Pi 4 Model B? Are you running a variety of things at once on it? Given I want to simplify everything on to one device, I'm looking at running all the bitcoin apps I mentioned as well as potentially streaming media to multiple devices simultaneously. Can your Raspberry Pi handle all that?

I'd be happy to use something like that rather than a SBC, but a quick search seems the power draw on such devices will be anywhere between 5-10x more than a SBC. As I say, I'm looking for something with as little power draw as possible (for potential off grid use) while still being able to handle everything I've listed above, so I'd probably only buy a more power hungry device like that if it was absolutely necessary.

Good thinking. I already run RAID on my main storage, and I have some spare drives I could use to RAID everything except the blockchain itself.

I'd be happy to use something like that rather than a SBC, but a quick search seems the power draw on such devices will be anywhere between 5-10x more than a SBC. As I say, I'm looking for something with as little power draw as possible (for potential off grid use) while still being able to handle everything I've listed above, so I'd probably only buy a more power hungry device like that if it was absolutely necessary.

Have you checked it's current resource consumption? I like gnome-system-monitor for a quick overview: if CPU and RAM aren't maxed out, it can probably handle more.