Specs:

• 6 x Raspberry Pi 4 (8GB RAM) Boards

  • 6 x Raspberry Pi 4 POE Hats

• 1 x Bramble Raspberry Pi Cases (6 Bay Black)

• 1 x Synology DS620slim

  • 4 x Seagate 5TB 2.5” HDD

  • 2 x Intel 545s 512GB SSD

  • Total Usable is 10TB Disk + 500GB Flash Cache

Description:

Right now the Pi Cluster is setup with the nodes running K3s by Rancher Labs. A Synology DS620slim with 10TB of usable space makes up the shared storage for the system, providing it to the Pi’s via an NFS export of the volumes. The cluster is powered by an 8 port Ubiquiti POE switch, delivering power to the Pi’s over the same Ethernet cable that brings them data, leveraging a low profile POE hat that works with the Bramble case.

Uses:

Right now the cluster is an academic exercise where I hone my K8’s skills for use in my job as an HPC Storage Enginer. K8’s is a tool that is being use more and more for deployment of our services and we’re also looking to use it to orchestrate large data movement across systems. This provides a great place to test things like that.