Hardware recommendations for lightning nodes

https://twitter.com/lunaticoin/status/1522237631404429316

Raspberry Pi 4

A love-hate relationship

• it is a minimal viable hardware with up-to-date linux kernel

• a closed source binary blob required to boot aka. ThreadX

• Known problems:

• previous RPi generations are not suitable

• power-supply: quality >3A ; official RPi or Pimoroni

• USB-SATA adapter needed - decide by tests and recommendations, not price

• good experience with the Suntronics/GeekWorm X825 board whoc halso had the option to power the directly disk with a 4A barrel connector and the RPi through built in PoGo pins.

• SDcard: use min 32GB and Endurance type Sandisk/Samsung. If the OS si islow might be the first sign of failure - have a low threshold for ching the SDcard.

• Disk: use tested 1TB SSD models. Bigger sizes and some models with onboard cache tend to have power spikes and resulting freeze / disconnection from the RPi.

• a UPS is a must as cold-restarts will corrupt data

Shopping list with keywords: https://github.com/raspiblitz/raspiblitz#amazon-shopping-list-buy-parts--build-it-yourself

Laptop

laptoptweet

• more power - still energy efficient

• built in battery

• screen and keyboard to manage

Preferences

• wired LAN connection (can use an USB adapter)

• Second built-in disk in WWAN slot as seen in Thinkpads

• If there is an optical drive can use an optical bay drive caddy

• Twitter community: https://twitter.com/i/communities/1563029300911058944

Home server

servertweet

• Still can be a big saving on hosting despite higher power usage

• Unlimited storage with disk redundancy (ZFS)

• Cockpit webinterface

Preferences

• ECC RAM to prevent data corruption in memory

• Multiple disks to use a checksumming, "self-healing" software RAID like ZFS

• Avoid hardware RAID cards - often another source of problems and recovery is not possible with other hardware

Use a minimal VPS with ZeroTier or Tailscale to tunnel services to a public domain

• VPN tunnels

Build guides:

• Raspibolt

• TrueNASnode - full bitcoin stack deployment guide

• Raspiblitz - Alternative platforms

• Install Raspiblitz on Proxmox

• ZFS links:

  • OpenZFS on Debian

  • Capacity calculator

  • Why you should use mirror vdevs not raidz

  • ZFS manager plugin for Cockpit

  • Create a ZFS pool to be used as a Raspiblitz data disk