Pocket-sized cloud with a Raspberry Pi

In my homelab I've got RPis running Minio (S3-compatible block storage), step-ca (local certificate authority), CoreDNS (local DNS), a local gpsd/chrony setup (for local GPS-backed NTP, using the Uputronics GPS hat), shairport-sync (AirPlay server), and some web services fronted by Caddy. A great way to learn and try out various services, Linux distros, infrastructure management options, etc.

&gt;TCO: ~35 USD<p>This is a nitpick, but I suspect the author doesn&#x27;t know what &quot;TCO&quot; means. It <i>doesn&#x27;t</i> mean &quot;all in purchase price&quot;, it means... &quot;total cost of ownership&quot;[1]. The base raspberry pi[2] already costs between $25-$35. Add in shipping, cost of cables&#x2F;charge&#x2F;case (pictured), the <i>purchase price</i> alone would likely exceed $35. If we add in the cost of 5 years of power (I&#x27;m using 1W) that would definitely push us well beyond $35. And this is all before going over the biggest line item: cost of labor. It might be &quot;free&quot; to you, but if you&#x27;re doing a cost calculation you should at least value it at the federal minimum wage.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Total_cost_of_ownership" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Total_cost_of_ownership</a><p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Raspberry_Pi" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Raspberry_Pi</a>

Other things that you can do (to build upon these) is to go for higher-level functions:<p>- Run n8n.io for inter-SaaS workflows<p>- Run Node-RED for lower-level automation<p>- Forego containers and use <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;piku" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;piku</a> to run simple web apps<p>(disclaimer: I wrote Piku as a sort of anti-pattern since I wanted Heroku-style deploys without Docker and buildpacks)

For some reason I ended up in a discussion with a friend about this; the agreement was that this wasn&#x27;t a cloud simply because it&#x27;s a single point of failure and it&#x27;s not &quot;someone else&#x27;s computer&quot;.<p>Which of course led to a discussion of whether you could, in principle, make self-contained cloud devices, powered by Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators, which you could deploy to a) confuse and frighten but b) create a self-managing mesh cloud?

We often joke that ``the cloud is just someone else&#x27; computer,&#x27;&#x27; but that&#x27;s not entirely accurate, because it&#x27;s not just one computer, it&#x27;s a network of computers, allowing the processes on it to continue running regardless of the status of any individual piece of hardware, or any single OS.<p>To throw everything on a single Raspberry Pi isn&#x27;t really a cloud, even though it&#x27;s offering cloud-like services.

Good luck finding any Pi. Pis are selling for $150 a piece where I live. This price is fixed. Whether you get a 2GB or 4GB version at this price is your bargain hunt. Big shops have none. It&#x27;s now all in online personal ad market.

Serious question. I&#x27;m in my mid 40s, I&#x27;ve been using Linux for over two decades. I use a tinc network (also Syncthing) to manage my home and two offices, plus my kids laptops. We do gaming, I do media server stuff. I teach IT, I own a (presently inactive) web-design company..etc. etc.<p>All to say, I don&#x27;t understand the point of this. What is this for and why would I want it?

Where are people buying Raspberry Pis these days? I went to go buy one a couple of days ago and it was sold out many places.

I am totally lost as to how this is a cloud.<p>The author&#x27;s definition of pocket-sized cloud is &quot;a place to run our code, which can be configured through an API - using containers for packaging&quot; and that is not what I understand a cloud to be.<p>It doesn&#x27;t seem to have any of the definitive properties of cloud computing. What am I missing here?

I wonder if it would be possible to setup dummy billing. That would be fun.

&gt; Many of us own at least one Raspberry Pi, and if it&#x27;s not doing duty as a media player, retro gaming console, blocking ads, or reporting the weather, then it may well be gathering dust.<p>&gt; I&#x27;m writing this article as an excuse for you to blow the dust off those microchips, and to put your pocket-sized silicon to work as the world&#x27;s smallest API-driven cloud.<p>&gt; By following the instructions in this article, you&#x27;ll be able to deploy scheduled tasks, webhook receivers, web pages and functions to your pocket-sized cloud from anywhere using a REST API.

Read this two times, but really couldn&#x27;t understand why I&#x27;d want to do this, which practical problems this is going to solve. Must be getting old...