I’m considering moving to Start9. One of my key considerations is the ability to run multiple disks in raid 1 config. Ideally, I would have one large 2TB ssd for the blockchain and then smaller ssds for lnd data in raid 1 config. Is this setup possible with StartOS?
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Hi slaaavo!
The current version of StartOS does not support storing data on separate drives, but this feature is in development for future releases. Your best option is to use a Type 1 hypervisor, like Proxmox, and run StartOS as a VM.
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StartOS won’t currently do what you are trying to do there. StartOS stores all service containers, and their data, on a single drive. If you run StartOS in a VM, the virtual drive that StartOS sees as a single drive, can be a Raid 1 handled by the host OS. But you still won’t be able split service between drives. VMs or not.
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I have a 128gb SD card and a external 2TB nvme SSD. I flashed the Start9 OS on to the SD card and inserted into my pi 4. During the initial setup the OS was asking which drive to store data so i selected the external nvme SSD. Does this means the OS and the application data will be on the SSD drive?
@S9btc no, since you flashed the OS on the SD card, the OS will be there, while your data will be stored on the external SSD.
Thanks for the reply. So this means future OS updates will be on the SD card right? Also if I install an application will it be on the SD card or the SSD?
OS updates will go to the OS drive/partition. Services are in containers, on the data drive/partition. So in your case, OS updates will go to the SD card. When you install a service, or what you called “an application.” it’s containerized, with it’s corresponding data. This container would be on your external drive.
Let’s take a step back though. We do have a StartOS build for the Raspberry Pi 4. This will make a great little server for lightweight services such as Bitwarden, or Nextcloud. It’s no longer suitable for running a Bitcoin node. The Pi lacks sufficient disk I/O and RAM to handle the ever-growing size of the current UTXO set. The initial block download will be a problem, taking a very long time to complete, if ever. If you transfer a pre-validated blockchain, you can avoid the initial block download issue, and it might work okay for now. But it will be increasingly problematic going forward. For whatever OS you choose to run a Bitcoin node with, ultimately you’re going to need more powerful hardware. Until you do so, I’d probably leave your node as is. Once you have a new node running on more powerful hardware, you can repurpose the Pi for something else using StartOS.
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Understand your comments. I am running a pi 4 w/4gb ram running bitcoin core fully synced also with electrs. I am connecting my ledger nano S+ to sparrow wallet which to connected to the private electrum server on my node. So far running on a pi 4 w/4gb ram is smooth. I just SSH into my pi 4.
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