How Effective is Raspberry Pi 4B as a Home Server?

Wei Dad is a DIY enthusiast, and his best project is a visual autonomous driving car. A few days ago, Wei Dad’s company was clearing out electronic waste and had a Raspberry Pi 4B to dispose of. Hearing it was free, he decided to do some DIY. After some research, netizens claimed that the Raspberry Pi is best suited for a home server. Wei Dad was skeptical; servers are usually high-performance computers, can a small Raspberry Pi barely meet the needs of home cloud services?

Upon seeing this, Wei Dad realized that the performance of the Raspberry Pi 4 might actually be sufficient. He decided to personally test its performance in home server applications, considering cost, power consumption, and maintainability for reference.

Using existing household devices, the system setup was very quick; Wei Dad completed it in just 2 hours one night (if interested in the installation tutorial, please leave a message).

· Main Storage: Seagate 2.5-inch disassembled hard drive in ext4 format, paired with USB 3.0 hard drive reader (actual read speed 120MB/s, write speed 107MB/s).

· Network: Gigabit network set up with Huawei Q2s router, home broadband from Telecom (downlink 200Mbps, uplink 30Mbps, with public IP).

· Testing Devices: ThinkPad T490, Macbook Air M1, iPhone 11 Pro Max, iPad Pro 11, Samsung S8.

· Cloud Storage Application: Open-source project KodBox v1.25, supports WebDAV access.

· Cloud Notes Application: Open-source project Joplin, supports Evernote note import.

· Video Sharing: miniDLNA + TV’s built-in player + Transmission downloader.

· Cloud Album: Open-source project Piwigo, comes with iOS and Android apps.

▲ A family photo of Wei Dad and the devices.

KodBox has a nice UI design that aligns well with local user habits, making it easy to create, copy, delete, and manage folders. It supports image/PDF file previews, online extraction of compressed files, and public sharing of file links, allowing up to 10 people to create independent accounts. Interested readers can experience it on the KodBox official website; Wei Dad will not advertise.

▲ Computer browser management page.

KodBox runs very smoothly on the Raspberry Pi 4. But how about the most important file transfer speed for cloud storage? Wei Dad conducted a small experiment:

Wei Dad uploaded and downloaded the Raspberry Pi operating system image (size 3.1GB) over the home network.

Wei Dad also tested uploading and downloading about 500 images, each around 200KB, with a total size of 100MB.

· The platform first zipped the files before downloading, taking 10 seconds to zip and 10 seconds to download, with an overall average speed of 5MB/s.

Wei Dad conducted the same test at work, but due to home broadband speed limitations, the upload and download speeds for large files were 20MB/s and 6MB/s, respectively. However, it basically meets the usage requirements. Access via WebDAV protocol to add network folders is also very convenient, and the user experience is comparable to the Synology NAS that Wei Dad has used for years.

To Wei Dad’s surprise, the KodBox mobile app allows for very smooth file viewing after entering the server address over 4G network.

▲ KodBox APP.

Wei Dad used the open-source cloud note application Joplin and configured it to synchronize with the KodBox WebDAV server on the Raspberry Pi, storing notes in his personal cloud.

Wei Dad exported nearly 3000 notes recorded over more than a decade in Evernote into an enex file, which was 308MB in size. He was amazed that text takes up so little space; writing millions of words over the years only took up 308MB, which is less than a single episode of a TV show.

Importing these 3000 notes into the MBA took 90 seconds (this tests the computer’s capability, not the Raspberry Pi’s), and synchronizing to the Raspberry Pi server took 90 minutes. 90 minutes is quite a long time, but it should not be blamed on the Joplin software; Wei Dad also took this long using Synology NAS with WebDAV server and Joplin. During this process, there was a small hiccup; when synchronizing notes on the Android side, the system kept reporting errors when a single note exceeded 600KB. After deleting several particularly large notes, synchronization was completed successfully, while the iOS side did not encounter this issue.

▲ Joplin desktop client.

Note files are saved on the server backend as Markdown files, as shown in the following image. All notes together occupy 406MB of space, of which 387MB is attachments and images, so the storage burden is relatively light.

▲ Joplin server file structure.

Wei Dad tried it out; there are clients for Mac, Windows, iOS, and Android, with no device number limits and no storage space limits, which feels very liberating.

Wei Dad has collected many movies, and the ideal way is to use DLNA technology to play movies remotely on the TV.

▲ Xiaomi TV with built-in DLNA player.

Wei Dad installed the miniDLNA plugin on the Raspberry Pi and successfully saw the DLNA folder on the Xiaomi TV. He opened the collector’s edition of “Titanic,” and the picture was very smooth, with a bitrate of 6.4Mbps posing no challenge.

Wei Dad also frequently downloads new movies from the PT community, directly using Transmission to open torrent files for downloads, with speeds reaching 10MB/s. He can also monitor and manage download/upload tasks through the public web access management page using his mobile browser.

After downloading and completing the seeding task, Wei Dad uses the “Network Mount” function of the KodBox admin account to copy the movie to the miniDLNA video library, so it can be watched directly on the TV.

There are not many open-source photo album applications, and after researching multiple projects, Wei Dad decided to use the long-standing Piwigo album (released in 2010), mainly because it has a mobile app that meets basic needs in the mobile internet era. The installation of Piwigo was not entirely smooth, as there were some issues with online tutorials. Fortunately, Wei Dad was able to figure it out in the end.

Overall, Piwigo’s image display and external link access features are quite mature, and browsing albums on mobile is also quite smooth. However, the settings interface is a bit too geeky; while Wei Dad can understand and use the settings, his wife probably cannot.

The actual mobile upload speed reached 20MB/s without difficulty, but unfortunately, it does not support video uploads and playback, which is a bit of a drawback.

Some readers asked how public network access for the Raspberry Pi server is achieved. This is actually another big pitfall for home servers, which could warrant a separate article. Here is a brief introduction to Wei Dad’s solution:

· Obtained a public IP from the telecom broadband operator.

· Purchased a personalized domain name and DNS resolution service from Tencent Cloud.

· Mapped the domain name and router’s public IP using DDNS technology.

· Used the router’s NAT technology to map the external network port to the port on the Raspberry Pi server.

Wei Dad bought an AC ammeter and connected it to the power strip with the Raspberry Pi and hard drive enclosure to test the power consumption under various conditions.

Overall, the power consumption of the Raspberry Pi server is not high; it consumes less than 4 kWh per month, costing less than 3 yuan, which is less than the price of a breakfast for Wei Dad.

Wei Dad has been using the system for two weeks, and the overall stability is quite good; it has not crashed, and the power consumption is also acceptable. However, from a maintenance perspective, the Raspberry Pi and hard drive are in a semi-exposed state on the desk, making them prone to dust and water; it is safer to place them in a weak electric box. Moreover, considering server reliability and data security, it is best to have a UPS power supply to cope with occasional power outages. The lifespan of the disassembled 2.5-inch mechanical hard drive is also a potential risk.

Although Wei Dad utilized waste materials and spent no money, only 2 hours of time. However, if someone wanted to specifically set up a hardware system, it would cost over 1000 yuan and require considerable DIY skills. It might be more cost-effective and convenient to buy a ready-made NAS. Later, Wei Dad plans to see if he can achieve the same functionality using a cheaper Raspberry Pi 3 or even a domestic Pi.

Reference: 【1】Wei Dad has tested that TCP network communication speed can reach 920Mbit/s, so the speed loss is likely caused by the KodBox application itself.