List of all the hardware required for the setup of the cluster.
- Ercielook CAT8 Lan Cable 0.25m (Amazon)
- APC Back UPS, BX2200MI-GR (Amazon)
- Reolink PoE-Switch, 8+2 Ports (Amazon)
- deleyCON 6-way Power Strip (Amazon)
- Raspberry Pi 5 8GB (Amazon)
- Waveshare PCIe to M.2 Adapter Board (Amazon)
- Crucial P310 SSD 1TB M.2 2230 PCIe Gen4 NVMe (Amazon)
- SANDISK Dual USB Type C & Type A, 128 GB (Amazon)
- BENFEI USB-C to Ethernet Adapter, RJ45 Gigabit LAN (Amazon)
- Official Raspberry Pi 5 USB-C Charger 27W (Amazon)
- Raspberry Pi 4B 8GB (Amazon)
- WaveShare Power Over Ethernet HAT (Amazon)
- Green LEDs 2V 20mA (Amazon)
- 1W 220 Ohm Carbon Film Resistors (Amazon)
- F2F Jumper Wires (Amazon)
- Micro SD 32GB (Amazon)
- Plug the UPS into your wall socket
- Connect the 6-way power strip
- Insert the power cord of the POE-switch into the strip
- Set up the master node and power it with the official charger, also from the strip
- Connect the Ethernet interface of the master node to your router using a LAN cable (this cable not included in the list)
- Connect the master node and the POE-switch: master node <-> USB-Ethernet adapter <-> short LAN cable <-> uplink-port of the switch
- Each worker node has to be set up separately, then it can be connected to the POE-ports of the switch through another short LAN cable
- Each new "layer" (explained below) requires a connection between two POE-switches on the uplink-ports through a short LAN cable, the new switch should be powered from the strip
- Install the PCIe board and the SSD on the Raspberry Pi 5
- Install Raspberry Pi OS on the USB drive
- Follow software instructions from the Cluster Setup
- Install the POE-HAT on the Raspberry Pi 4B
- Connect jumper wires, resistors and an LED to the GPIO of the HAT like shown in the image:
The connection will be pretty loose, my solution was to tighten the connection points using regular tape, you may want to use something more serious in production, e.g. heat-shrink rubber-tubes
Note: this step is entirely optional and the software will work out of the box, even without the LED-GPIO setup - Install Raspberry Pi OS on the Micro SD
- Follow software instructions from the Cluster Setup
Prices from Amazon: Fri 5. June 2026, 03:00 CET (Europe/Berlin)
| Part | Components | Price | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Peripherals | required | LAN cables, switch | 89.38 € |
| optional | UPS, power strip | 271.99 € | |
| subtotal | 361.37 € | ||
| Master node | RasPi 5, PCIe board, SSD, charger, USB drive, USB-Ethernet adapter | 422.05 € | |
| Worker node | required | RasPi 4B, POE-HAT, Micro SD | 207.65 € |
| optional | Jumper wires, LEDs, resistors | 23.06 € | |
| subtotal | 230.71 € | ||
| Setup | minimal | 719.08 € | |
| full | 1014.13 € | ||
| A | Connection type and direction | B |
|---|---|---|
| 1x [Wall Socket] | Power | 1x [UPS] |
| ---> | ||
| 1x [UPS] | Power | Up to 4x [Power strip] |
| ---> | ||
| 1x [Power strip] | Power |
1x [Master Node] and up to 5x[Switch]
or Up to 6x [Switch] |
| ---> | ||
| 1x [Private router] | Ethernet | 1x [Master Node] |
| <--> | ||
| 1x [Master Node] | Ethernet | 1x [Switch] |
| <--> | ||
| 1x [Switch] | Power over Ethernet | Up to 8x [Worker Node] |
| <--> | ||
| 1x [Switch] | Uplink | 1x [Switch] |
| <--> |
This design allows slowly adding new components, until no more space is left in the current section.
First you get Raspis one after another, then you get a new switch, then repeat until you buy a new power strip and so on.
This scalability has a theoretical maximum of (3*6 + 1*5) * 8 = 184 worker nodes, resulting in 1.47 TB of RAM.
Although, considering power consumption, only up to 9 switches can be safely plugged into the setup, resulting in "only" 576 GB of RAM.
This setup is perfect for small- or medium-scale hosting of liteweight services like landing pages, discord bots and APIs.
- Cluster Setup - software setup instructions for both master and worker nodes
- gXLg-Cluster - a project that controls the communication between the master and the worker nodes, and is also responsible for other things, such as a web control panel, tunnel management and load balancing
- Cluster Models - 3D models for the case of the cluster, developed and licensed by a good colleague