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ARM based low-end servers
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ARM based low-end servers

pcanpcan Member
edited February 2012 in General

Is anyone planning to offer ARM based servers, later this year? HP already released a youtube video of their new ARM server hardware. According to the available documentation, they designed it to offer low-end, low-cost dedicated servers at the same price point of today virtual machines. According to the statements, prototype machines are being demonstrated now to the interested web hosting providers and companies, and will be released this year. Check "hp discovery lab" on youtube, and "HP project Moonshoot" on Google. This is very promising: halfway in the video they demonstrated a 4U machine with 4 drawer blades. Each drawer is stocked with 18 server cards, each one hosting 4 independent server nodes at 32 bit - 1,4 GHz. This sums to 288 independent servers in 4U. Storage seems to be external. Processor speed is a bit on the low side, but with the right price this could be a very capable replacement for some of my VM's. I also read that Dell is working on the same idea. Has anyone tried this kind of hardware? The price will be the dealbreaker, because I already saw similar hardware before, but the only low-price offer I know is the one proposed by France-based www.online.net. They use the Dell XS11-VX8 server, and the price is not really so interesting.

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Comments

  • Traditionally when talking about new technology that fails to talk about cost, cost is a point trying to be avoided. There were lots of key words used in that video telling me they do not want to talk to you and I, they want to sell to someone with little to no knowledge of what they are doing, show a bunch of slides, make a sale that fills a few racks at once, and collect their bonus check.

    Now some other questions this raises for me based on the past 20 years of watching this Internet industry grow. What will Intel do to kill ARM? That is my first question, and after watching them eventually kill off SPARC and any other competing CPU technology, they surely have no plans to embrace ARM, no matter what they say.

    From the look of what I am finding about this, HP has no interest in anyone but large providers with this concept, so it will be quite some time before this will be available at a reasonable cost to be offered in the budget market.

    Thanked by 1Mon5t3r
  • Intel doesn't need to kill ARM since intel also produces ARM processors. It just needs to become the supplier of ARM processors for HP.

  • MaouniqueMaounique Host Rep, Veteran
    edited February 2012

    That looks interesting, however, I wonder how is the power drain per "board" or whatever, is it lower than per average VPS with same power, sure, taking into account the separate storage ?
    Second, as someone already pointed out, this is not for the regular SOHO market, it will probably never be cheap, at least not cheaper than a VPS with the same power. And that is the bottom of line, EVEN IF the power usage is lower which I seriously doubt.
    Will probably succeed in a boxed home server aproach with only one board, tho.
    M

  • @rds100 said: Intel doesn't need to kill ARM since intel also produces ARM processors.

    Source? I looked myself, and only found Intel has license to produce/design ARM, and no intention of doing so, but rather has a 3 year plan to advance Atom at a faster pace.

  • rds100rds100 Member
    edited February 2012

    @mitgib there is the XScale line, not sure if intel still makes them but i guess yes, although couldn't find anything about it on ark.intel.com
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XScale

    clarification: i see that intel has sold this division to Marvell, so maybe they are no longer involved with the XScale.

    Anyway, anybody wanting to try an ARM based server can grab a Raspberry PI for $35, it should be available for sale "real soon now"

    Thanked by 2Liam miTgiB
  • miTgiBmiTgiB Member
    edited February 2012

    @rds100 said: "real soon now"

    Yeah, I've heard @Delta say that.......

    @rds100 said: Anyway, anybody wanting to try an ARM based server can grab a Raspberry PI for $35

    Thanks, for $35, why not, lets you play with something new.

  • @mitgb We cannot rule out yet the idea that this approach will be cost-effective. Maybe this will fade out like you wrote: I can imagine that this technology could be sold as specialized solution for people with big pockets that wants a real physical processors (maybe because they don't trust the security features of hypervisor solutions - a really underestimated issue, on in my opinion). The scenario you depicted is a real possibility and reminds me many similar outcomes of the past. But still: maybe this will be a good way to have a dedicated server with some decent amount of RAM connected to a fast SAN at low price, and this will definitely change the way I value VPS offers. ARM technology is a commodity and HP is definitely not the only player in the town, see the Raspberry popularity at the opposite (home/enthusiast) end of the spectrum. Your concern about Intel reactions is a good point. If this idea will be effective on the market, on my opinion Intel already has many ways to respond. For starter, they already demonstrated (and put on the shelves for possible future use) a chip with many independent processors. This is already more advanced than the proposed ARM solution, because the interconnection network is integrated on chip and therefore less expensive.

  • BitcableBitcable Member
    edited February 2012

    I'm going to throw a couple of Raspberry Pis into our rack once I get my hands on them.

    Thanked by 1Liam
  • Intel still has an ARM license, but there is no way in hell they'll start producing ARM chips.

    http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/02/rosepoint/

    Intel's working on making low power x86 chips to compete with ARM.

    It's very unlikely Intel will get anywhere as far as phones go, but tablets and ultra portables...

  • @bitcable: Raspberry Pi model B will be a nice LEB, but it does not support PXE/netboot (you need to manually remove and reflash the SD card to reinstall OS from scratch) and Ethernet chip is connected to Usb 2.0 bus (it will be slow). On the plus side, according to the documentation the UPS could be as simple as 4 AA batteries. If you plan to put on rack the naked board, be sure to install it in a box to avoid touching it. I work sometimes with developer/naked boards, and touching them while electrostatically charged is enough to zap some chip (at least it happened to me).

  • MaouniqueMaounique Host Rep, Veteran

    @pcan said: If you plan to put on rack the naked board, be sure to install it in a box to avoid touching it. I work sometimes with developer/naked boards, and touching them while electrostatically charged is enough to zap some chip (at least it happened to me).

    I remember when, long ago i took that seriously and had a lot of care, especially since I live in a country where money are hard to get and any damaged component is a little tragedy, but NEVER had any problem, even tho nowadays, as the components shrink, they should be more vulnerable in theory.
    However, I had a friend some 2 years ago that couldnt touch anything without breaking, literally. Didnt matter if he was "grounded" or not, what he was wearing, if he touched the memory, even with extra-care, was good for the bin.
    So, it depends on the person, i guess. I was wearing wool clothing on synthetic covered chair, a nuke combination for electrostatics, still nothing burned, if it wasnt for that guy I would have thought that is just a myth, more or less.
    M

  • KuJoeKuJoe Member, Host Rep

    @Bitcable said: I'm going to throw a couple of Raspberry Pis into our rack once I get my hands on them.

    +1. :)

    Thanked by 1netomx
  • @Bitcable said: I'm going to throw a couple of Raspberry Pis into our rack once I get my hands on them.

    Not If I get them first.

  • @pcan we have tape-robots, why don't we make some Raspberry-Pi-SD-Card-Switching-Robot? Isn't that were arduino is for?

  • @Derek said: Not If I get them first.

    Hah, yeah. It's annoying how they're not allowing pre-orders. I will honestly buy at least 3 or 4 for personal use and donate one.

  • @liam said: @bitcable Heck, I'll be happy to send you a couple by airmail if you wish ;)

    LOL.

  • Someone should offer dedicated hosting of Raspberry Pis.... ;)

  • For a few minutes last week, I was mulling over the idea of starting a dedicated server business using Raspberry Pis. I gave up on the idea when I realised that from a functionality standpoint, they would have nothing to offer over a well managed Xen node offering VPS hosting.

    Here are the Pros for offering Raspberry Pis as a dedicated option:

    1) Can be marketed as a "Dedicated Server"
    2) Disk IOPS are dedicated to you
    3) Very low power, almost free
    4) No hypervisor. May meet requirements for companies that require dedicated silicon.

    Here are the Cons:

    1) Runs Arm. I'm not sure how good apt-get and yum is for Arm. While I'm personally comfortable compiling things myself, many customers are not
    2) The disk would be a compact flash. Slow!
    3) Very slow processor compared to a Virtual Server

    In the end of the day, Raspberry Pis are designed for dev and experimental work. Not convinced on the dedicated server option.

    It was only a few minutes, I promise :)

  • One thing that would be awesome would be to tap into your DC's air flow to spin a small fan, to generate some electricity, to power the Raspberry Pis! That would be a really fun experiment!

  • @Bitcable said: Hah, yeah. It's annoying how they're not allowing pre-orders. I will honestly buy at least 3 or 4 for personal use and donate one.

    Donate one to me please.

  • @Jonny_Evorack said: 1) Runs Arm. I'm not sure how good apt-get and yum is for Arm. While I'm personally comfortable compiling things myself, many customers are not

    Apt-get works very well in my Nokia N900.

  • @tux said: Apt-get works very well in my Nokia N900.

    The N900 is awesome. Too bad Nokia's been making bad moves recently (all Elop's fault).

  • Atleast the R&D is still done in Finland.

  • ElliotJElliotJ Member
    edited February 2012

    I was thinking of throwing up some Raspberry Pi's for colo, and plugging in a 32GB USB stick in each one. Anyone game?

    EDIT: Oh, I forgot to mention. Online.net have been doing it for while, with one of those Dell XS11-VX8 thingymajigs.

  • USB 'HDD's? That'll end up a nightmare down the road <_<

  • ElliotJElliotJ Member
    edited February 2012

    Well, it's either that or an SD card. Choose your poison :')

  • My poison is redundancy :P With proper precautions, I see no issue with using SD or USB tech. I just would never use it on something that I couldn't personally lay hands on when it failed :P

  • Any idea what speed NIC these will have? Could offer disk space over NFS or some other network filesystem, but if it's only 100 mbit, then you're stuck with 12 mb/sec disk I/O...

  • @Damian i think it is less than 100 Mbps real life throughtput - ethernet chip connected to the USB bus.

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