5 Ways Raspberry Pi Can Save Your Company Money!

The Raspberry Pi is a fantastic little device with so many uses. Not only is it a nice little computer to learn coding, it’s often used for various home projects (home automation, media center, home server, gaming, etc.). But today I want to talk about something else: using it in your business.

I’ve been a sysadmin for many years, and if you don’t know, everything is very expensive when it comes to business hardware and software. And unless you have an unlimited budget, that’s going to quickly put a damper on your grandiose plans to make things better.

Hopefully, I’ve discovered the Raspberry Pi along the way, and it’s helped me improve the company network several times without breaking the bank. Here are 5 projects you might want to consider if you’re in the same situation (or want to look good to your boss).

If you’re looking for inspiration for your next Raspberry Pi project, I’ve put together a list of 75+ ideas with full descriptions, difficulty ratings, and links to tutorials. Whether you’re a beginner or more advanced, there’s something here for you. Grab the list for free here!

Backup solution for small sites

My first suggestion is to use the Raspberry Pi as a NAS on your network, but not the way you think.

I assume you already have a fancy backup solution in your headquarters that backs up your user data and server configuration. That’s essential, so I hope you’ve already figured that out.

But that’s not exactly what I’m suggesting here. First, the Raspberry Pi is clearly not the best option for managing backups (there are safer solutions than an SD card for starters).

But let’s say you have an isolated site with one or two computers, how do you manage their backups? Will you really get a $1000 NAS and a licensed software on each computer?

For a small office, I recommend thinking about a Raspberry Pi. For less than $100 you can have 256 GB of storage, and install Samba or an FTP server to run your backup for free from the computers. You can even transfer the files to the company headquarter during the night if there are important files to secure.

Note: Want to see a full example of a custom backup script and learn how to improve it each time (with compression, history, automation, and remote backup)? I have a video lesson on this topic just for community members. Join here to watch, and get access to 30+ other lessons for Raspberry Pi along with many other benefits!

If you want to give it a try, all you need is a Raspberry Pi start kit. Just pick one with a decent CPU and an Ethernet port, it doesn’t have to be the more expensive one.

A Raspberry Pi 4 Starter Kit would be perfect (check the price on Amazon) and a SD card from 32 GB to 512 GB depending on the disk space you need (my favorite one is available here on Amazon).

For the software, Raspberry Pi OS Lite should be enough, I have a guide on how to turn your Raspberry Pi into a file server, check it if needed. You can also install OpenMediaVault to manage everything from an intuitive web interface.

Related articles you might want to check:

• Pi NAS: A Guide to Build Your Own Budget-Friendly NAS
• Ubuntu Backup Essentials: Tips and Tricks from a sysadmin
• 17 Security Tips From A Pro To Protect Your Linux Server

Replace control PCs with Raspberry Pi

Another smart way to use Raspberry Pi in your business is to replace computers that are not being used to their full potential. I’m typically thinking of monitoring computers, you know, the ones that display the same dashboard all day.

In a factory I used to work in, they had three brand new computers in a control room that displayed the same web page all day. Do they really need the latest CPU and 16GB of RAM? Obviously not.

A Raspberry Pi would have been perfect for this. If you can suggest this to your boss, he will save at least $1000 on the next computer renewal, and maybe give you a raise instead ;-).

Be careful though, it won’t work in all cases. Using a Raspberry Pi instead of a traditional PC means it will be running Linux, and asking people to switch from Windows to Linux is not that easy.

I remember trying to use a Raspberry Pi in a server room to access the other servers (all running in virtual machines with no monitor/keyboard), but even for my team (IT guys) it wasn’t easy to get them to change their habits. And we were quickly missing some essential Windows applications, so in the end we didn’t keep this solution.

So it’s not a silver bullet, just keep it in mind if you think it fits the needs of a particular use case. Don’t try to sell this as a magic solution for everything, or it will backfire.

Related articles you might want to check:

• Installing Windows 11 on Raspberry Pi (An Illustrated Guide)
• 17 Best Apps to Use a Raspberry Pi as a Desktop PC
• Get Started with Wine on Raspberry Pi (Beginner’s guide)

Internet or Network / Wi-Fi speed tester

Now let’s talk about an idea I’ve already implemented in my company: a network speed tester, especially for Wi-Fi networks.

We had a problem with the Internet/Wi-Fi speed in a certain location. Using a laptop in that area, I was never able to figure out what was happening as it was always working fine for me. But I kept getting complaints from users, so I decided to dig a little deeper.

I set up a Raspberry Pi at this specific location, always connected to the Wi-Fi, and ran speed tests every 5 minutes. This was done with SpeedTest CLI (I explain everything here), and the data was collected with Cacti (a Zabbix alternative) to get a historical graph, and Nagios to get alerted when the results were too low.

Basically, a Python script runs a speed test every 5 minutes, writes the last result in a file, and fills an SNMP OID with the value so Nagios and Cacti can read it and do their job.

It’s not as complicated as it seems, and it helped a lot to find the underlying problem we were having with the Wi-Fi in that area (FYI: overloaded access point when crowded meetings were organized).

Verify that everything is going as planned

I also used a Raspberry Pi to run scripts at a specific time, or to run Nagios checks remotely. This was for a home project, but you can absolutely do the same in your company.

Let’s say you have a few computers on a network, but all your servers are in the cloud, hosted in a data center. If you want to run a script from your local network, or schedule a check on each PC on the network, you can’t.

That’s where adding a Raspberry Pi can help, as you can do everything you need from it, and schedule tasks easily with a cron.

In my example, I have a NAS at home to back up my websites outside the data center. I’m using a small Raspberry Pi Zero to download the files to the NAS each night (yes, the NAS operating system sucks). And I also have a Nagios server in a data center, connecting to this Pi Zero to check regularly if the backups are updated as expected.

It may seem overkill for home use, but you get the idea. A cheap $15 Raspberry Pi Zero can save you money for remote locations where you don’t necessarily want to add a traditional server to do all these maintenance tasks.

Your secret door to the local network

My last suggestion is to run a VPN server on a Raspberry Pi, to get access to your company network safely from anywhere in the world.

If you want to install a VPN server in your company, you may not want to buy a brand new dedicated server just for a few people that need to connect from home or in travel.

A Raspberry Pi is all you need to set this up for a record low price.

As explained in my guide on how to install OpenVPN on a Raspberry Pi, you can absolutely put a Raspberry Pi in your DMZ and use it as a server for less than 10 simultaneous users.

Even a cheap Raspberry Pi Zero could be enough to do this (check the price on Amazon, it’s perfect for this kind of project). Think about it: you can buy more than 50 Pi Zero kits for the price of a brand-new Dell server 🙂

I have other tutorials on this topic if you want to give it a try:

• How to Install and Use No-IP on Raspberry Pi? (Dynamic DNS)
• WireGuard Installation on Raspberry Pi: Easy Setup Guide
• Raspberry Pi: OpenVPN vs WireGuard, which one is the best?
• How to Set Up Raspberry Pi Connect for Remote Access

That’s it, those were 5 good ideas to cut costs in your business, and that’s just a starting point. Try to think about using a Raspberry Pi more often, and you might get a raise faster than you thought!

Bad employees spend a lot of money, the smartest think more.

My boss

If you have other ideas to share on the topic, feel free to leave a comment in the community.
You can also check out my other contributions aimed at corporate use:

• Digital Signage with a Raspberry Pi : Replace an expensive display solution by a cheap Raspberry Pi
• Gitlab server or Jenkins server on a Raspberry Pi, don’t buy a dedicated server for this
• Nextcloud multi-usages server, share files, contacts and password securely and for free, hosted on a Raspberry Pi
• Install Grafana on Raspberry Pi : create graphs easily from any data source

Whenever you’re ready, here are other ways I can help you:

Test Your Raspberry Pi Level (Free): Not sure why everything takes so long on your Raspberry Pi? Take this free 3-minute assessment and see what’s causing the problems.

The RaspberryTips Community: Need help or want to discuss your Raspberry Pi projects with others who actually get it? Join the RaspberryTips Community and get access to private forums, exclusive lessons, and direct help.

Master your Raspberry Pi in 30 days: If you are looking for the best tips to become an expert on Raspberry Pi, this book is for you. Learn useful Linux skills and practice multiple projects with step-by-step guides.

Master Python on Raspberry Pi: Create, understand, and improve any Python script for your Raspberry Pi. Learn the essentials step-by-step without losing time understanding useless concepts.

You can also find all my recommendations for tools and hardware on this page.