11 Reasons Why Raspberry Pi is the Perfect Small Server

 

 

1.Power consumption

The Pi draws about five to seven watts of electricity. This is about one tenth of what a comparable full-size box can use. Since servers are running constantly night and day, the electrical savings can really add up. Based on Chris Clay calculation, the basic Pi kit (Pi board, case, and power supply) will pay for itself with about one year's worth of electricity savings if it's left to run 24x7x365. He then ended up with the CanaKit Basic Kit (ASIN # B00DG9D6IK) which is very affordable and good quality. 

 

2.No moving parts

The Pi uses an SD card for storage, which is fast and has no moving parts.  There are also no fans and other things to worry about.  A Class 10 SD card is usually the best performing compared to lower class cards, but this will mainly only affect boot time where there is the most I/O. 

 

3.Small form factor

The Pi (with a case) can be held in your hand.  A comparable full-size box cannot.  This means the Pi can be integrated inside of devices, too. 

 

4.No noise

The Pi is completely silent. 

 

5.Status light

There are several status lights on the Pi's motherboard.  With a clear case you can see NIC activity, disk I/O, power status, etc. 

 

6.Expansion capabilities

There are numerous devices available for the Pi, all at very affordable prices.  Everything from an I/O board (GPIO) to a camera.  The Pi has two USB ports, however by hooking up a powered USB hub,more devices can be added. 

 

7.Build-in HDMI capable graphics

The display port on the Pi is HDMI and can handle resolutions up to 1920×1200, which is nice for making the Pi in to a video player box for example.  There are some converters that can convert to VGA for backwards compatibility. Hence, Chris Clay ended up using the Sanoxy HDMI to VGA cable (ASIN # B0088K7QUQ) which has worked well so far. 

 

8.Affordable

Compared to other similar alternatives, the Pi (revision B) offers the best specs for the price, at least that I've found.  It is one of the few devices in its class that offers 512 MB of RAM. The Pi has come down in price since it first arrived, and is finally affordable as a hobby, business use, or whatever need there is. 

 

9.Huge community support

The Pi has phenomenal community support. Support can be obtained quite easily for the hardware and/or GNU/Linux software that runs on the Pi mainly in user forums, depending on the GNU/Linux distribution used. A good list of distributions can be found here. 

 

10.Overclocking capability

The Pi can be overclocked if there are performance problems with the application used, but it is at the user's risk to do this. 

 

11.Multiple uses

Having the storage on an SD card makes it easy to swap with other SD cards running other GNU/Linux distributions to quickly and easily change the functionality of the Pi. If you want to set up the Pi to run as a server to test it out, then later try something else, just swap the SD card and you're done. Using the "dd" command on a GNU/Linux computer, a backup of the SD card can be created and later restored if needed.

The Raspberry Pi has found its way in to the hobbyist market for computing, but it is also very capable for other business and personal use as well. An extremely low power draw, small form factor, no noise, solid state storage, and other features make it an attractive solution for a small and lightweight server.

Source: Raspberry Pi: 11 reasons why it's the perfect small server by Chris Clay at http://www.zdnet.com/raspberry-pi-11-reasons-why-its-the-perfect-small-server-7000025206/