{"id":31,"date":"2016-03-26T18:16:39","date_gmt":"2016-03-26T18:16:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.copahost.com\/blog\/?p=31"},"modified":"2026-10-20T11:20:06","modified_gmt":"2026-10-20T11:20:06","slug":"is-it-possible-to-run-a-web-server-in-a-raspberry-pi-3-as-a-dedicated-server","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.copahost.com\/blog\/is-it-possible-to-run-a-web-server-in-a-raspberry-pi-3-as-a-dedicated-server\/","title":{"rendered":"Raspberry Pi as a Dedicated Server: We Tested One (2016) and What Changed Since"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"dedicated<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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About this test.<\/strong> We ran this in 2016 on a Raspberry Pi 3 B, in our own data centre, against a real dedicated server. The benchmark figures and photographs below are from that test and haven’t been altered. What the Pi can do today is a different question \u2014 there’s a section on that at the end.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Raspberry has been one of the greatest revolutions of modern computing. It sold over 5 million units since 2015. Most of the people use it as a media centre, video games emulator console, music player, advertising outdoors…  And now Copahost thought: why not using it as a cheap dedicated server<\/a>?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First of all, the setup<\/h2>\n\n\n
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\"cheap<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

We used one stock Raspberry Pi 3 B (49\u20ac<\/span>), with 1GB of RAM and a 1.2GHz 64-bit quad-core ARM Cortex-A53 CPU. The storage is one 32GB Adata Class 10 MicroSD card (9\u20ac<\/span>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This Cortex-A53 is 10 times faster than the original Raspberry 1 CPU. That’s a huge improvement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We installed Raspbian Jessie on it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let’s bring the Raspberry “junior” dedicated server into the data center and power it on<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"rasp<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"rasp<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Expand the filesystem with raspi-config<\/h2>\n\n\n
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\"raspi-config\"<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

By default, Raspbian will partition the SD card only using a small partition. We must enter raspi-config, in order to expand the filesystem to use all the available space in the SD card.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

# raspi-config<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And then simply select “Expand Filesystem” and hit enter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Note: you have to reboot<\/a> it so that changes take effect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After the reboot, we can now see the whole space mounted in \/<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"rasp<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

A note on versions:<\/strong> the commands below install what was current in 2016 \u2014 Raspbian Jessie, Apache 2, PHP 5 and MySQL 5.6. All are now end-of-life, and apt-get install php5<\/code> no longer resolves on a modern Raspberry Pi OS. They’re kept here as the record of what was tested. On a current Pi, the equivalent is apt install apache2 php mariadb-server<\/code>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Installing LAMP – Apache MySQL and PHP<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

We prepared a standard and popular environment, similar to a dedicated server<\/a>. Installed<\/a> and configured Apache 2, PHP 5 and MySQL 5.6.  Raspberry was set up to run a WordPress website as a test.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First of all, let’s install Apache web server<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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# sudo apt-get install apache2 -y<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Now let’s install PHP5 with Libapache<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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# sudo apt-get install php5 libapache2-mod-php5 -y<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Now we will install MySQL<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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# sudo apt-get install mysql-server php5-mysql -y<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Let’s see it running<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"raspberry<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"raspberry<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Benchmark – Dedicated server vs Raspberry Pi 3 B<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

We made a stress test on the web server<\/a>, to check what its limit is. We performed 50 concurrent and sequential connections to it, using curl<\/strong>. The result was amazing. It stayed stable up to 35 concurrent connections and still responded at 50 \u2014 which sounds better than it is, as the sysbench comparison below shows. Serving a static page under load is a different task from computing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We created a script called stress.sh, with this content:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

max=50\nfor (( i=1; i <= $max; ++i ))\ndo\ncurl -s \"http:\/\/rasptest.copahost.com?[0-500]\" &\ndone\n<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
\"rasp<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Of course we know Raspberry have a simple CPU, compatible with its price. So we put an old dedicated server together and tested both of them with sysbench for linux.
\n\"rasp<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In Sysbench we got a score of 40.23s in E2180 versus 954.90s in Raspberry Pi 3. The lower, the better. The performance of the Raspberry Pi 3 may be a bit disappointing if compared with a standard dedicated server.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In other words, this CPU is 23 times slower<\/strong> than a standard Pentium Dual Core.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ten years later: where the Pi stands now<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
This test ran in 2016 on a Pi 3 B. The prediction at the end \u2014 that future versions would become genuinely competitive \u2014 turned out to be right, and sooner than expected.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Pi 5<\/strong>, released in 2023, is several times faster in every dimension: a quad-core Cortex-A76 at 2.4GHz, up to 16GB of RAM, and \u2014 the change that matters most for server use \u2014 a PCIe interface for NVMe storage<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That last one addresses the biggest weakness in this test. The Pi 3’s bottleneck wasn’t really the CPU; it was the SD card. A Pi 5 with an NVMe drive removes that entirely, and the difference on database work is not subtle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What hasn’t changed:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n