This is part of an ongoing series. Read the introductory post here!

This post will cover the first step of acquiring and building hardware. Posts on the other setup steps can be found below:

Hardware Setup

Going in, I knew physical infrastructure would be the most expensive part of the whole project. Since I plan on using open source software I am also hoping this will be the only expense. Looking to do this relatively cheap I focused mostly on buying pre-owned parts.

Servers

There was no need to get fancy here. My initial thought was to buy a couple pre-owned, outdated computers and use them. However, I live in a small apartment so space is an issue. The idea of having a couple small computers constantly running in the corner of my room just seemed annoying. Also I was worried about power consumption especially with older PCs. Since I planned to automate as much as possible I did not need a lot of connectability to these things in terms of ports. Really so long as it could run Linux and had a network connection I was good to go.

The concerns about price, size, and power efficiency led me pretty naturally to using Raspberry Pis. On Facebook Marketplace I found some Raspberry Pi 3A+ for $25 a piece. The person had 30 of them to sell so I picked up 6. This should give me more than enough servers to mess around with while also having one or two left over for separate projects or isolated tests.

My one major worry is the 3A+ model only has 512mb of RAM which seems small but I am going to treat it as a fun constraint and hope for the best.

I did not want these just sprawled out on my desk so I also grabbed the world's cutest server rack for $20.

Cost: $170

Storage

Each of these servers would need to have their own storage device attached for hosting the operating system, running software, and storing local configuration files. Raspbery Pi 3A+ models have a microSD card slot. These SDs are not for long-term file storage so my main concern was having just enough space to run tools like Docker.

I was hoping to pick these up used at a local computer shop but they only had larger 64 and 128GB microSDs. Instead I went to Amazon and grabbed 6 cheap 32GB cards at $12 for a set of 3.

Additionally, I would need a hard-drive for long-term file storage. This I was able to find at the computer shop so grabbed a used 256GB SSD and external case. Unfortunately I threw out the receipt but I think the SSD was ~$20 and the case was ~$15.

Cost: ~$59

Power

Last, and least interesting, is power. Each Raspberry Pi needs a microUSB cord to be powered. At the computer shop I got these for $4 a piece. I also grabbed a USB charging hub there for ~$20 that has individual power buttons for each slot similar to this hub.

Cost: ~$44

Total Cost: ~$273

The actual construction of all this was rather uneventful. It was exactly as you would expect. I screwed together the rack and plugged in some cords. The more fun stuff comes with software so keep an eye out for the next post covering the initial server OS setup!