Curious if there are any development issues, other than memory and performance, that might be a disadvantage to running other tasks on the same Pi as OpenHab … Obviously there are memory and performance implications, but here I am focused on system issues as new modules are added and the system is upgraded etc.
Are there obvious things that would simply make it better to run other tasks on a separate Pi? That is what I am doing now (I have Pis to spare) … but just curious if there is any inherent issues with the way OpenHabian system is maintained? Like, the need to keep some libraries at older levels etc. etc.
I don’t think that OH fixes the versions of any libraries or programs in the base OS. Where I can imagine you might have issues:
networking port conflicts
resources (as you already mentioned)
multiple versions of Java might cause some configuration issues to make sure the right Java is used by the right service.
it’s harder to support here on the forum as you’ll be running a non-standard configuration; it’s hard to tell the difference between something you’ve done wrong or a legitimate bug when deviating from the standard.
Beyond those basic statements the true answer is going to differ on a case by case basis,.
You should be fine. I don’t run OpenHabian but have many similar components related to OpenHab. On that Pi 3, I also run PiHole. One general concern is that the more you put on the same hardware, the more it hurts when the hardware fails. In my case, I have a secondary PiHole instance running on a separate Pi 4 machine.
Another thing I noticed is that OH 3 seems to consume more memory on OH 2; less of a problem with your Pi 4, but it will reduce what you can run in parallel.
Thanks Rich - that last point is one I didn’t consider and probably is worth heeding … I think I’ll leave the PI alone and run my other stuff elsewhere. Thanks for the thoughtful response.
Any extra software comes with an extra risk.
I’ve seen a lot of foreseeable but also unlikely things go wrong in 20+ yrs of designing and operating Linux server farms for mission critical computing i.e. with telcos.
Any of the non-OH software can have a mem leak, fill the disk, overload the CPU.
You (admin) may accidently break the system - the more often you work on it the more likely you make mistakes. 40% of outages are due to human error, and another 40% due to software, just 20% hardware.
Point is, saving 50 bucks for another Pi isn’t worth any risk to your home automation. My 2ct, YMMV.