Hello,
I have been using a Cubietech Cubietruck board (Sunuxi a20) for the past 4 years or so as a home server. It has been running Debian stable 24/7 with very few problems. I chose it because of the SATA socket that allowed me to connect an SSD for fast reliable storage, and the 2Gb of RAM with a dual core processor.
I am considering replacing it with something more up to date and performant, and I have seen a number of Rockchip RK3399 boards that look quite attractive from their spec sheets because they appear to have full open source kernel drivers for everything, 4Gb of RAM and PCIe or M.2 slots.
Is this SOC suited to long term server operation? I am aware that the RK3399 gets hot, so I need to plan an adequate heat sink, but are there any other issues? I/O bottlenecks? Unexplained crashes?
The three boards I am looking at are:
RockPi 4 from Radxa - https://rockpi.org/rockpi4
RockPro64 from Pine64 - https://www.pine64.org/rockpro64/
Helios64 from Kobol - https://wiki.kobol.io/helios64/intro/
Of these, the RockPi 4 is the cheapest, it has an M.2 socket with NVMe that I want, and good cases are available, but software support is the most uncertain.
The RockPro64, is a bit larger and more expensive. It has a full size PCIe x4 socket, so I can fit an NVMe drive using a simple adapter. I can’t find any pre-built cases, so I would have to make something myself, though I have done that before. There is an installation guide on the Debian Wiki, though it is not clear if the process is easy. https://wiki.debian.org/InstallingDebianOn/PINE64/PINEA64
The Helios64 is not yet released, and is much more expensive, but it looks better supported, and a well designed case with PSU and UPS is available. Unlike the others, there is no doubt that this is designed as a server. The onboard M.2 socket only supports SATA, as the PCIe lanes have been used to provide 5 SATA sockets for file server use. My use case has no need for the 5 drive bays.
Are there any other boards or chipsets I should be considering? I have not considered the RaspberryPi, because of heat issues, and because in older versions most of the I/O passed through the USB PHY, so file server performance is bad. Is that still an issue? The RaspberryPi does have the advantage of a wide range of cases and other accessories, good local availability, and a low price.
Or should I forget about running a server on an ARM board, and buy a cheap MiniITX solution instead? The reason I started using ARM hardware for a home servers about 10 years ago, was to reduce the electricity cost compared with running a normal PC 24/7.
In terms of my abilities, to install Debian on unknown hardware, I consider myself to be a competent Linux sys admin, I can clone a git repo, and compile something given very specific instructions, but I don’t feel competent to make code changes or debug kernel issues.
Thanks for reading.
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David Pottage