[ohuf]

I left the RasPi behind for a 2nd hand Lenovo m93p tiny for about $100. (An alternative HW would be the Dell Optiplex 9020 micro). You can upgrade the RAM on these and they use standard SSDs.

I'm booting the Proxmox VM environment and it's currently running a VM and a LXC container, with lots of future opportunities.

Proxmox allows you to reserve a vm's access to the USB ports, which comes in handy if you want to attach a Zigbee stick to a virtualized home automation server.

[tga]

You can add the Fujitsu Esprimo Q910/Q920 to the list of alternatives. There are many cheap options on eBay.

I also run Proxmox, with a few LXC containers and full KVM virtual machines, including a reverse proxy that routes traffic to them —- it’s great!

[spiderpug]

I second that. I'm running the same machine, but without virtualization.

It's mostly idle and very power efficient, which was very important to me cause power is 35c$/kWh. Chose the version with i5-4590T.

Works out great so far.

[B5C8ECB24DB47D1]

In the same form factor, there is also the HP EliteDesk 800 micro.