Why are people so opposed to pi’s as nodes?
8GB Raspberry Pis are back in stock. Go go go! https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/raspberry-pi/RASPBERRY-PI-4-MODEL-B-8G/12159401
Discussion
Because they're not powerful, but I used one for 3 years. It was a fantastic node for $55. I would do it again and again.
just less flexible.
given the premiums they were selling for over the past few years, you could get a Dell Optiplex Mini or Intel NUC for the same price and use something Proxmox to virtualise a whole bunch of VMs / containers on the same device.
for instance, i'm using an Intel NUC which runs my Pi-hole DNS instance, network hardware management server, Bitcoin node, Usenet clients (SABnzbd, Sonarr, Radarr), Torrent client, and some VMs for testing.
in doing so, i have been able to free up 2 switch ports, 2 GPO outlets and simplify management and backups.
Pi's are great at the right price point and use case. hopefully they increase manufacturing capacity and prices remain reasonable moving forwards.