TedLasso
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So Pi Experts, tell me if this is possible:-
I have a few Raspberry Pi 3s floating around running as Kodi Boxes and one as a Home Assistant. I just bought Ubiquity Wifi and security gear and am in the process of setting it up. As I need a UniFi controller on the cheap, I was going to go with Raspberry Pi. Then I got thinking. How about consolidating what the Pi's are doing and make hopefully my management easier.
The ultimate wishlist.
I need a system that allows me to run:- Home Assistant, Plex Server, PiHole, Unifi controller software. Ideally all this is run off Raspberry Pi's but with an external storage device (e.g. My 4TB RAID1 NAS) or a dedicated external 1TB USB 3 Drive for the entire cluster, so as to not kill the SD cards in the Pis.
The reason I think I need external storage is that due to the data coming in from the various iOT devices, electricity monitoring, etc, it is better to host on spinning disks or a 512GB SSD to ensure stability, performance and electricity saving. I want the Home assistant to use grafana, etc too so don't know how much space it could eat up.
So without purchasing more hardware or a new PC/NUC, I was thinking, why not just repurpose my 3 Pis and then build a 3 way Raspberry Pi Cluster with Docker and then use Docker containers (?) for the Hass.io, Plex, PiHole and Unifi apps. The operating system would be Raspbian. (https://blog.alexellis.io/your-serverless-raspberry-pi-cluster/)
The reason is that I can then build something cool in one location. As I have firesticks and Apple TVs too, I could actually just load the Plex App on them to then stream from the Plex Server. I have been using Kodi as that's what I had for years. Don't really care for add-ons, etc that come with Kodi since I've never used it (I know - that's why I am a Luddite
)
So sanity check from the experts required:-
1) Is this a good idea? Docker images should mean it is easier to deploy applications onto the cluster - hopefully with some failover in case one Pi fails. Hopefully, I will add a 4th Pi to the cluster in the next 6 months.
Hass.io (https://www.home-assistant.io/docs/installation/docker/)
Plex (https://forums.plex.tv/t/official-plex-media-server-docker-images-getting-started/172291)
PiHole (https://hub.docker.com/r/pihole/pihole/)
Unifi (https://hub.docker.com/r/jacobalberty/unifi/)
2) Would a Pi Cluster provide more resilience for the docker containers or am I actually just better off with 1 Pi for Unifi+PiHole, 1 for Hass.io and 1 for Plex Server.
3) Ideally, I don't want more spinning disks. I want to use my NAS first and if not possible, then I want to use a single 1TB USB drive I have as the platform to host the Pi Cluster and Docker Data.
3.1 can the PIs use an external NFS volume for their data.
3.2 Could all Pi's use the same NFS volume? My NAS is quite old but is in RAID1 and could host all the data. Ideally, I would buy two more disks and then use them exclusively for the Pis only. (https://thepihut.com/blogs/raspberry-pi-tutorials/19669700-using-network-storage-on-the-raspberry-pi)
Thanks in advance for your expert advice.
I have a few Raspberry Pi 3s floating around running as Kodi Boxes and one as a Home Assistant. I just bought Ubiquity Wifi and security gear and am in the process of setting it up. As I need a UniFi controller on the cheap, I was going to go with Raspberry Pi. Then I got thinking. How about consolidating what the Pi's are doing and make hopefully my management easier.
The ultimate wishlist.
I need a system that allows me to run:- Home Assistant, Plex Server, PiHole, Unifi controller software. Ideally all this is run off Raspberry Pi's but with an external storage device (e.g. My 4TB RAID1 NAS) or a dedicated external 1TB USB 3 Drive for the entire cluster, so as to not kill the SD cards in the Pis.
The reason I think I need external storage is that due to the data coming in from the various iOT devices, electricity monitoring, etc, it is better to host on spinning disks or a 512GB SSD to ensure stability, performance and electricity saving. I want the Home assistant to use grafana, etc too so don't know how much space it could eat up.
So without purchasing more hardware or a new PC/NUC, I was thinking, why not just repurpose my 3 Pis and then build a 3 way Raspberry Pi Cluster with Docker and then use Docker containers (?) for the Hass.io, Plex, PiHole and Unifi apps. The operating system would be Raspbian. (https://blog.alexellis.io/your-serverless-raspberry-pi-cluster/)
The reason is that I can then build something cool in one location. As I have firesticks and Apple TVs too, I could actually just load the Plex App on them to then stream from the Plex Server. I have been using Kodi as that's what I had for years. Don't really care for add-ons, etc that come with Kodi since I've never used it (I know - that's why I am a Luddite
)So sanity check from the experts required:-
1) Is this a good idea? Docker images should mean it is easier to deploy applications onto the cluster - hopefully with some failover in case one Pi fails. Hopefully, I will add a 4th Pi to the cluster in the next 6 months.
Hass.io (https://www.home-assistant.io/docs/installation/docker/)
Plex (https://forums.plex.tv/t/official-plex-media-server-docker-images-getting-started/172291)
PiHole (https://hub.docker.com/r/pihole/pihole/)
Unifi (https://hub.docker.com/r/jacobalberty/unifi/)
2) Would a Pi Cluster provide more resilience for the docker containers or am I actually just better off with 1 Pi for Unifi+PiHole, 1 for Hass.io and 1 for Plex Server.
3) Ideally, I don't want more spinning disks. I want to use my NAS first and if not possible, then I want to use a single 1TB USB drive I have as the platform to host the Pi Cluster and Docker Data.
3.1 can the PIs use an external NFS volume for their data.
3.2 Could all Pi's use the same NFS volume? My NAS is quite old but is in RAID1 and could host all the data. Ideally, I would buy two more disks and then use them exclusively for the Pis only. (https://thepihut.com/blogs/raspberry-pi-tutorials/19669700-using-network-storage-on-the-raspberry-pi)
Thanks in advance for your expert advice.