The issue was much more straightforward than i thought. It seems sometimes thinking of too complex issues will hinder finding the easiest cause - the local forewall on the pi was blocking it / had no explcite allow.

To check i did: sudo ufw status verbose

There was only port 22

I added the new port as Allow Port 8081: sudo ufw allow 8081

And it works now!

Quick Update:

I’ve been evaluating the best options and decided to wait a few months, until more devices are out and the ones i am looking at become cheaper.

I have decided for a proof of concept or intermediate solution by using the raspberry pi with openmediavault and 2x 2TB SSDs connected via USB, as well as SnapRaid to sync them. This should suffice for storage and test in shortterm. However i ran into an issue with the connection to OMV here:
OMV not reachable

My options for later:

1. The Beelink S12 Pro with 16 GB of RAM and 512GB storage. Unfortunately this will be a limited option, as most sources state that 16Gb is the max for this model. (some say 32GB). However it is cheap, a good start and in the long run i could buy more powered by solar to create a highly available mini cluster via k3s.

2. Morefine M9, slightly more expensive, but with a 1TB SSD and can be upgraded to 32GB for sure. Unfortunately it’s not directly available in my country, but i’ve found a reseller, who seems to have it under a new brand name.

3. Passively Cooled Firewall appliance with no ssd or ram, also N100 or N305. Has good reviews on the common yputube channels, in the end more expensive, but better ports and 4x 2,5GbE. It sounds interesting, but its only sold via a chinese trading company on amazon.

4. An older i3 1120g4 or something similar, which would allow me to use 64GB of RAM. Unfortunately i found literally no devices with it being sold at all.

Generally i’d prefer 64GB and 6 to 8 Cores, but in the low power area that is tough to find. The N305 has 8 cores, but max 32GB RAM, the i3 allows 64GB but nothing is being sold, as for the N100 is cheap, but only 4 cores (might be sufficient, if i later extend to a mini cluster powered powered by solar), but also limited to 32GB.

In general, nothing really ideal, so i hope that later this year either more devices drop in price or become available (like anything with the N300 would be interesting too).

What do you guys think of these choices for a mini beginner budget low power homelab ? (the description becomes longer over time…)

From what i saw, asrock announced 2 N100 boards, but they only have limited ports, not much different to the common mini pcs already on the market.

Can you recommend some devices? Most of the ones i saw had good prices, but not performance relative to power usage. The N100 with its 4 efficiency cores is actually quite good for the price and power usage. Unfortunately most mini pcs with it have limited ports.

I also think, that 2 ssds might be sufficient for the beginning. I’m even thinking of just adding 2 external ssd’s and call it a day for the beginning (one as backup), but that does not scale well.

The jbod idea sounds good to explore further, as it tha home server and storage would be separated. However it would add an additional device to the power bill.

However i don’t need the full amount of all disks at all times. If i’d want to unplug via shell script, i’d need to plug it manually in person back in for storing things. I actually do not need it running all the time, as the home server ssd can cache most of what i need recently in access. The jbod is then more an archive.

i’m mainly looking for a way to power down the inexpensive hdd’s. I could use the raspberry pi as the jbod controller, but it does not properly support wake on lan, so thats also not an option