Hardware requirements for dedicated ODK Central server

[ceebeelee]

Hello. Our field partner is insisting on having a local server rather than using a cloud for ODK Central (or ODK cloud).

We have about 25 tablets which will be syncing with our server each evening. I am looking for suggestions on a good size / specs for a server to run ODK Central?

Assuming we'll be network-limited, and reliability aside, could we just use any old laptop lying around? Or will having 10-25 simultaneous connections be a big strain on the server's other resources (CPU?)?

My guess is that the load from ODK Central is not high at all. However, we will likely not be able to test with our full fleet until too late.

A similar question was asked a decade ago for an antecedent of Central's:

Odk aggregate server recommended/required sytem and hardware specs

Hi everyone. Would like to ask for advice on the specs of the server. We plan to setup an aggregate server soon and we need to know the recommended specs like the recommended OS, processor, RAM, etc. Sorry, I tried to search the site but couldn't find the page that discusses the recommended system requirements. Many thanks in advance!

Thanks for sharing any relevant experience!
Chris

[yanokwa]

Anything with 2 cores, 4 GB RAM, and an SSD should work. If you are just collecting text, 2 GB RAM would probably work too.

See https://docs.getodk.org/central-intro#notes-on-performance for more.