If you are looking into Umbrell it is worthwhile to look into Start9 as well. I'm a big fan of their products. They have a very easy interface, especially for beginners.
If you want the no-brainer plug it in and it works, you can buy the #start9 hardware with #startos preinstalled. They currently have a #serverone (starting $500 USD) which is Raspberry Pi based and a #serverpro (Starting $1,800 USD) which is Intel based.
If you want to run it on your own hardware you can. Just download the software (used to be called #embassyos ) from Start9 and follow their guides. It's a bit more work, but the instructions are clear and it doesn't take that long. The DIY model supports most raspberry pi and intel hardware though occasionally hardware driver specific issues cause problems.
You should think a bit about what you want to run on your server. if you do not have a stable internet connection, running a lightning node is impractical (and potentially dangerous - loss of funds if you are offline too long) and even a bitcoin node may be challenging. The initial download / sync of the full BTC blockchain took me a couple days on my server one and 14 hours (I think) on the server pro - but I have cable modem with total download test speeds of 750Mbps. Slower connectivity will take longer. You can consider a pruned node (less data to download and store). Figuring out what you want to run on your server before setting it up helps.
#grownostr #start9
If you don’t have a fixed internet connection it’s probably not the best idea to run a Lightning Node with lots of funds at home.
Since you are a beginner there are 2 good options.
1. Get an older laptop with at least 8gb of memory and at least 1 TB SSD and install Ubuntu on it , or try to get a Raspberry Pi 4 with 8gb and 1 TB SSD. On both you can install Umbrel. Make sure you have it placed somewhere where there is a stable internet connection during the initial blockchain download, this might take some days till a week.
2. If you just want to play with a Lightning node and don’t want to buy any hardware go to https://voltage.cloud and rent a Lightning node in the cloud for about 10 dollars a month, this is by far the easiest a quickest way to get started. But this doesn’t give you a private bitcoin node that you want to connect to your Sparrow Wallet. After a couple of months you can decide if you want to invest in the hardware.
🙏 Thanks so much. I downloaded Sparrow, I'd really like to connect my hardware wallet -ledger atm but considering moving to a btc only hw wallet like coldcard - to my own node, even though it is possible to use a public node. Maybe am I getting paranoid ;) but i guess it's because I'd like to gain full control over my funds.
I also need to figure out why I will need to have an electrum server on top of the btc node. I haven't understood why it gives the best security.
So in any case I think I'll be running my own node ultimately, using a stable connection, maybe not at home. Start9 server one is unfortunately sold out for now. Also some parts may be hard to source to build my own. But those arent huge issues.
What else could i run on my private at home server? A relay to support nostr? How would that work? should I size the server accordingly?
https://marketplace.start9.com/marketplace is the list of services supported by #start9. There is also a community marketplace where folks in the community have packaged and support services to run on Start9.
For #nostr I run both a #privaterelay and #iris client on my Start9.
You should give some thought to what you plan to run as you size your server. If you will run jellyfin with lots of media you will need more disk space than 'normal' users.
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