My partner and I are looking for a new place to be. Being the computing-dependent nerd that I am, I want to be able to have all the services I depend on in our current place available in the new place as soon as there's power and Internet. To that end, I decided what I ought to do is build a road-ready rack with a firewall and a few computers in it. Once we close on the new place and get utilities turned on, I can pop the rack in there, and be up and running in an hour or 2.
Some background - About a year ago, I had switched from all my "vital services" being on VMs on a Proxmox cluster to hosting them on a couple RasPi 5s. I consolidated a lot. Where before I had separate VMs for my RMVOD, Icecast2, Desktop, food inventory web app, file services, and so on, I decided I could do a lot more with a lot less CPU and memory overhead if I just had it all running on one 16GB RasPi 5. I have a second RP5 that is the Jenkins host and hosts backup media. Actually there's a third RP5 that acts as a bastion server and rack console. This resulted in using a lot less power and generating a lot less heat. The file services are facilitated by 4 x 8TB disks configured in a RAID5 arrangement in a USB3 enclosure, viz:
Can be got here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DD3GZSGJ
That USB3 4-bay HDD enclosure hangs off the one main 16GB RasPi 5, and holds my audio and video stashes, my personal file share, and various sundry other bits and bobs. Other than that, and USB connections to printers and backup media, basically my whole "infrastructure" is handled by 3 Raspberry Pi 5s and a tiny Netgate box doing the routing.
This transition has worked out well. My plan is to more or less replicate this success but in a portable package.
Enter Caravan
The name "caravan" was just meant as a nod to portability and the kind of "home away from home" self-contained nature of a camping trailer or RV. I settled on a 6-space rack enclosure, such that it could handle a switch, a shelf for a Netgate 1100, 2U for a RasPi enclosure, and a PDU.
I ended up getting this enclosure:
Can be got here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CZ41ZHD6
It comes with screws for the rails (it takes 10-32 screws, but prefers them short), so that's handy, but there's a few shortcuts taken by the manufacturer that might cause frustration. The plastic stinks -- it off-gasses... It claims to be HDPE... and maybe it is, but I've never come across HDPE stinking like this. Screws holding the rack rails to the enclosure are poorly placed. Things like that. On the bright side it's cheap, and I'm not going on tour with Aerosmith (or whoever the kids like today), so extreme toughness and/or ATA-certification is not important for me in this application. Surviving an 8-hour car ride is the thing.
The switch I settled on is a simple TP-link 24-port unmanaged gigabit switch (TL-SG1024S). It fits in 1U, comes with the rack ears and is under a hundred bucks.
Can be got here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0779R9LJ3
The PDU is kind of an odd choice. I went with one from Pyle. Yeah, Pyle. Normally, Tripp-Lite has been my go-to for rack PDUs in my personal/home stuff. They're pretty bulletproof, and I've found them reliable. In this instance, tho, I was anticipating having a bunch of wall-wart power supplies (because no one has figured out how to do a rack-mount muli-Pi power supply yet, apparently) and 1U PDUs with traditional outlets are just not happy with that. This Pyle unit has all pigtails in the back. It really is a thing of beauty. Viz:
Can be got here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B072RC5NZQ
The big deal, tho, is the enclosure/mount for the Raspberry Pis. I wanted something that would accommodate the PCIe SSD capability offered by the Pi 5. I also wanted to be able to stuff it with RasPis, because... who knows what kind of goofy shenanigans I might get up to? I went with a GeekPi unit which stands the RasPis on their side, and has a daughter board for each of the 10 "caddies" which uses pogo pins for power delivery and some GPIO connections, and connects to the PCIe connector on the Pi for M.2 SSD support via flat-flex. This enclosure holds up to 10 RasPi 5s. My only big gripe with this thing is that the screws for the caddies aren't captive. The daughter boards seem to work great, and packing up to 40 cores of Raspberry Pi goodness into 2U is pretty sweet. The daughter boards move the power connection to the front panel, so easy power on/off is right there.
Can be got here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DQL2N6V9
I have the rack assembled and 7 of the RasPi slots occupied. Now I'm building out services. I've currently got 1 16GB, 2 8GB and 4 4GB RasPis mounted. One of the 8GB units has a 1TB SSD setup as a MariaDB server, with the OS on a MicroSD, and the data on the SSD. The other 8GB unit also has a 1TB SSD, but the OS is installed on it. This one is serving as a Desktop machine with xrdp installed. I have one of the 4GB RasPis serving as a bastion server and rack console, and the other 3 4GB units have not been assigned, although I expect one of them will be a file & print server (and maybe identity) and one will likely be media streaming. I have designs for setting up local email, chat, groupware, an Asterisk PBX, and a few other services. The 16GB unit will host most of the dynamic web stuff (minus database and file needs). I haven't worked it all out yet, and I have some room to grown in the GeekPi enclosure.
More to come
There's plenty more to do and a lot more decisions to take. I'll update as this progresses, but I thought it might be nice to offer some of the stuff I've done so far in case anybody's considering a similar project.
I think that's all for now.
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