# Raspberry Pi Cluster Recommendation

**URL:** <https://forums.suse.com/t/raspberry-pi-cluster-recommendation/42812>\
**Category:** k3s, k3OS, and k3d\
**Created:** [March 22, 2024, 11:37am UTC](https://forums.suse.com/t/raspberry-pi-cluster-recommendation/42812 "2024-03-22T11:37:12Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 6\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![elronzo](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex022/user_avatar/forums.suse.com/elronzo/32/9971_2.png) [@elronzo](https://forums.suse.com/u/elronzo)\
**Post date:** [March 22, 2024, 11:37am UTC](https://forums.suse.com/t/raspberry-pi-cluster-recommendation/42812/1 "2024-03-22T11:37:12Z")

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I plan to use K3s at home in order to run a HomeAssistant smarthome pod as well as some other relatively tiny pods on it. What would you recommend here?

This is my current resource usage:

```auto
NAME CPU(cores) MEMORY(bytes)   
xy-deployment-8645b48d4f-twxcd 38m 248Mi           
homeassistant-deployment-5c69db6f9c-4nzrw 8m 519Mi           
ab-deployment-7596f7445b-frwlc 4m 23Mi            
asdf-deployment-5c46b55b55-gbdm2 1m 75Mi            
zigbee2mqtt-deployment-6c8cd6c4d8-lr6w4 1m 100Mi      

```

- A single node K3s “cluster”
- A three-node cluster with control plane and workload on the same nodes
- A six-node cluster with three control-plane nodes and three for workloads

Which hardware would you chose? RPi 4 or RPi 5? Would 4 GB RAM be sufficient for the mastern nodes? ( I know SSDs for controlplane nodes are a must to run etcd reliably…)

What are your thoughts?

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**Author:** ![malcolmlewis1](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex022/user_avatar/forums.suse.com/malcolmlewis1/32/10022_2.png) [@malcolmlewis1](https://forums.suse.com/u/malcolmlewis1)\
**Post date:** [March 22, 2024, 1:03pm UTC](https://forums.suse.com/t/raspberry-pi-cluster-recommendation/42812/2 "2024-03-22T13:03:37Z")

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@elronzo does it get busy?  
I found the quad core Intel N series are more than ample to run RKE or K3s, I’m using Beelink devices they are NVMe and SSD ready.

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**Author:** ![elronzo](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex022/user_avatar/forums.suse.com/elronzo/32/9971_2.png) [@elronzo](https://forums.suse.com/u/elronzo)\
**Post date:** [March 22, 2024, 1:18pm UTC](https://forums.suse.com/t/raspberry-pi-cluster-recommendation/42812/3 "2024-03-22T13:18:58Z")

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I would like to keep node costs down to € 100 per node. The Beelink is way over it.

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**Author:** ![malcolmlewis1](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex022/user_avatar/forums.suse.com/malcolmlewis1/32/10022_2.png) [@malcolmlewis1](https://forums.suse.com/u/malcolmlewis1)\
**Post date:** [March 22, 2024, 1:34pm UTC](https://forums.suse.com/t/raspberry-pi-cluster-recommendation/42812/4 "2024-03-22T13:34:33Z")

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@elronzo well on a RPi you still have to add some storage and extra hardware on a RPi for an SSD or NVMe? I don’t see why just one node should be sufficient, I’m using my one for Rancher on RKE2 and rsync backup (to an SSD). It also runs Hyprland on occasions, but most of the time just running/updating and rebooting as I run openSUSE MicroOS on it…

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![elronzo](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex022/user_avatar/forums.suse.com/elronzo/32/9971_2.png) [@elronzo](https://forums.suse.com/u/elronzo)\
**Post date:** [March 22, 2024, 1:42pm UTC](https://forums.suse.com/t/raspberry-pi-cluster-recommendation/42812/5 "2024-03-22T13:42:01Z")

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The one-node solution was only a thought if costs get out of hand… but maybe a one-node control-plane and three workers… could be a good start.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![malcolmlewis1](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex022/user_avatar/forums.suse.com/malcolmlewis1/32/10022_2.png) [@malcolmlewis1](https://forums.suse.com/u/malcolmlewis1)\
**Post date:** [March 22, 2024, 2:12pm UTC](https://forums.suse.com/t/raspberry-pi-cluster-recommendation/42812/6 "2024-03-22T14:12:44Z")

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@elronzo well it’s easy enough to add workers if needed and then taint the master node.

You can always look at using Rancher-Desktop (as a single node) deploy your requirements and see how it goes, for example 4 cores and 4GB of RAM to simulate the RPi before committing $$$.