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R-Pi Questions - Page 2
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R-Pi Questions

2

Comments

  • @DataIdeas-Josh said:

    @default said:
    DietPi is great indeed. I use it on my Pi.

    How do you like it compared to Raspbian?

    I find it the same. It might be considered lighter because of Dropbear instead of OpenSSH. However, I love the idea of disabled logs by default, as it protects the MicroSD card.

  • Wouldn't Tiny Core (PiCore) be good for this?

    @DataIdeas-Josh said:
    @FAT32 @MeAtExampleDotCom I did run across an OS DietPi that apparently runs on RAM and is a Debian fork.
    I have NOT tested it. Just something I had seen last night.

  • I am running CentOS on mine :-D

  • I still found Raspbian is the most stable OS for my RPis. Streamer, Plex server, docker server etc.

  • @default said:
    DietPi is great indeed. I use it on my Pi.

    +1. Been using it for more than a year on mine, no issues at all.

  • DataIdeas-JoshDataIdeas-Josh Member, Patron Provider

    @niknar1900 said:
    Wouldn't Tiny Core (PiCore) be good for this?

    @DataIdeas-Josh said:
    @FAT32 @MeAtExampleDotCom I did run across an OS DietPi that apparently runs on RAM and is a Debian fork.
    I have NOT tested it. Just something I had seen last night.

    Never ran it. Will look into it though.

  • PulsedMediaPulsedMedia Member, Patron Provider

    I recall seeing Rock64 hosting, which is very similar as RPi.

    Would be interesting tho to provide dedis like these tho. We are considering second DC build, there we would have space to host these too.

    Perhaps even stuff like: https://www.hardkernel.com/shop/odroid-mc1-my-cluster-one-with-32-cpu-cores-and-8gb-dram/

    Sadly they have discontinued this: https://www.hardkernel.com/shop/odroid-hc2-home-cloud-two/
    That would have made much more sense for us to offer.

    new version is 2x HDD: https://www.hardkernel.com/shop/odroid-hc4/
    That would be fun to offer :) Get some custom cases done, build custom PDUs with ROCKPro64+Relay boards to control power, slap 2x 18TB Drives on each, 1Gbps unmetered and call it a day at 50€/mo ea :)

    Tho generally speaking i don't know if there is a business case for these to offer as a dedi. It's just so much easier and simpler to get off lease refurbished servers, and can be cheaper too if you skimp on CPU & RAM.

    @DataIdeas-Josh said: We been pretty lucky with the sandisk SD cards. Although we will either be moving to USB booting or more preferred network booting/storage.

    Network storage is quite trivial, just setup iscsi target server + DHCP/PXE server. We did this back in '13 for a number of atom servers. We used targetcli to manage the iscsi targets, and performance was quite decent. I think i have the code still somewhere, well the Atom box which handled all that should still be at the DC.

  • PulsedMediaPulsedMedia Member, Patron Provider

    @plumberg said: Sure _ I see that view. Kinda makes sense.

    But another pressing item is the single core w 512M RAM - I am not sure what one can use it for other than VPN?

    Also CDN Reverse Proxy (ie. nginx reverse proxy), socks5 proxy, TOR bridge/exit, ZNC/IRC Box etc. even as a seedbox if enough storage.

    Anything regular dedi can do but on smaller scale.

    @DataIdeas-Josh might get ourselves one of your RPis as the umpteenth dns server.

    Also now that i think the odroid-hc4 hosting might make sense for us to provide, we have hundreds of used 3TB and 4TB drives which would be the perfect match to get decent pricing on them. 3TB drives are like 30$ a pop currently, that means the whole system would be around 135$ to acquire (still have to count like 3TB costs money!), for 12mo ROI (too niche to initially go further) would make the hardware portion ONLY 11.25$ per month - or 10€.

    Maybe 1€/Mo worth of space each, bandwidth + electricity, wiring 1€/mo. Could maybe get to below 20€/Mo for 6TB system -- it all depends on the bandwidth really, assuming 10G for 48 nodes and really cannot get below 20€/Mo. 15€ for 3 years prepayment.

    Cases from our own 3d printer farm and 80mm delta fan with separate fan controller boards would be probably cheap and scaleable too :)

    Then again, swap for 2x8TB and price only increases to ~30€/Mo

    Bringing back our old Atom and AMD E350 boards would be essentially free hardware tho, and we already have metal chassis' designed for mITX board, just shorten them for just 2-4x 3.5" and get the factory to crank out a few hundred of them ;)

    Oh well, so many ideas and possibilities, so little time! @DataIdeas-Josh if you want to chat around ideas etc. PM me. Curious how RPi hosting has been going for you guys.

  • defaultdefault Veteran
    edited January 2022

    In my opinion, the best attempt for ARM hosting in low-end market came from Scaleway project, when it was created by Online.Net from one of their departments called Online Labs. At the beginnings, Scaleway was absolutely great, offering small dedicated servers, called C1, in cloud. This was a huge success on the low-end ARM market, and it was so great that everything was sold really fast. As customer, I had to wait for hours sometimes to get a C1 available, it was crazy.

    The price at release, after free beta, was 12 Euro, but only few consumers took it (obviously not making good sales), so a few months later it dropped to 3 Euro and remained like this for quite a few years. There were barely any servers available, waiting for lots of hours to get one. Later, Scaleway announced the discontinuation of the C1 servers. This marked the end of low-end ARM hosting from Scaleway, because they started offering bigger dedicated ARM servers, while focusing on cheap VPS servers for low-end market, which nowadays get a price increase from time to time (including active services) due to Scaleway bad management habit.

    If any other provider wants to access this low-end ARM market, it would be great news, but it would also required some investments and risks as technology evolves.

    I love to see more Raspberry Pi hosting, but I don't know how cheap it can get, due to space in data center, shape of the board, power consumption, while Raspberry Pi with all it's features is not quite designed for data centers.

    Here is a video from Scaleway (Online Labs) as they promoted C1 in the past within their Iliad data center. I really loved it back then, and I really hate what company has become nowadays in their greed. They had 18 dedicated C1 servers on a single board.

  • PulsedMediaPulsedMedia Member, Patron Provider

    @default said: I love to see more Raspberry Pi hosting, but I don't know how cheap it can get, due to space in data center, shape of the board, power consumption, while Raspberry Pi with all it's features is not quite designed for data centers.

    Issue is wiring tbh, sooooo many network cables etc. making a huge mess. but taking a big picture view and approach could help on this, like scaleway did.

    3€ is next to impossible to get these days, since IPs alone can cost that much. would need to be NAT setup, or NAT + IPV6 to get to 3€.

    https://pine64.com/product/rockpro64-4gb-single-board-computer/ that alone costs 80$. RPi 4 is similarly priced. At a decent HW ROI, with all the ancillaries you are already looking at the very minimum 5€ a month. Pi 3 Model B would be about 2.5-3€/Month for the SBC alone.

    @default said: announced the discontinuation of the C1 servers. This marked the end of low-end ARM hosting from Scaleway, because they started offering bigger dedicated ARM servers, while focusing on cheap VPS servers for low-end market, which nowadays get a price increase from time to time (including active services) due to Scaleway bad management habit.

    Somehow sounds like it was not very good business, otherwise they would continue offering them or made a new version. Even tho online.net has a habit of ending old products abruptly and kicking users out OR replacing them with even lower specced (but assuming more profitable) servers.

    Also that highlights the point, KVM VPS can offer more performance for less cost, hence more profit.

    @default said: Here is a video from Scaleway (Online Labs) as they promoted C1 in the past within their Iliad data center. I really loved it back then, and I really hate what company has become nowadays in their greed.

    Very nice looking hardware indeed, i think they went a bit overboard on the design considering they did not sell outside that hardware. Simpler would have been sufficient. Shame they did not keep working on it, and offer the hardware for sale too.

  • @PulsedMedia said: https://pine64.com/product/rockpro64-4gb-single-board-computer/ that alone costs 80$. RPi 4 is similarly priced. At a decent HW ROI, with all the ancillaries you are already looking at the very minimum 5€ a month. Pi 3 Model B would be about 2.5-3€/Month for the SBC alone.

    Yep. Plus Scaleway built custom boards for their deployment to get the cost per server down as much as they could.

    Even then, I don't think their ROI was too great. I think in general this avenue wasn't a good use of their investments. Especially since (in my opinion) you get better quality hardware for less with a KVM VPS.

    I think it's nifty as a quirky thing. I don't think it'll really have much of an avenue to grow. OVH/SYS/Kimsufi also went through their phase of supporting ARM architecture servers and I think they're also no longer publicly sold.

  • DataIdeas-JoshDataIdeas-Josh Member, Patron Provider

    @PulsedMedia I'll shoot you a PM.
    @default I wonder what they did with their c1 boards if they stopped.

    I've kinda worked on developing a chassis that can hold 48 RPi(s) but other things took importance with the ARM machines.

    I've been working with @lanefu on some other ARM projects. I really like the idea and making ARM available.

    This will give you an idea of some of our setup.

    Thanked by 2niknar1900 lanefu
  • @DataIdeas-Josh said:
    @default I wonder what they did with their c1 boards if they stopped.

    I don't know. I only know they ended it, even though all C1 servers were fully rented and it was hard to see one available for grabs.

  • DataIdeas-JoshDataIdeas-Josh Member, Patron Provider

    @default said:

    @DataIdeas-Josh said:
    @default I wonder what they did with their c1 boards if they stopped.

    I don't know. I only know they ended it, even though all C1 servers were fully rented and it was hard to see one available for grabs.

    Is anyone from them here or do you have a contact for them? Maybe something I can take over or buy from them.

  • @DataIdeas-Josh said:

    @default said:

    @DataIdeas-Josh said:
    @default I wonder what they did with their c1 boards if they stopped.

    I don't know. I only know they ended it, even though all C1 servers were fully rented and it was hard to see one available for grabs.

    Is anyone from them here or do you have a contact for them? Maybe something I can take over or buy from them.

    Me too. Id love to pick some up.

  • PulsedMediaPulsedMedia Member, Patron Provider

    Same here, albeit they do not exactly fit our niche of large storage + bandwidth, but it would be interesting regardless to work on these. probably no business case tho

  • I thought to myself if you designed a 1u compatible motherboard that accepted Compute Module 4, you could have the ethernet ports on the back. But then I saw this:

  • craigbcraigb Member
    edited January 2022

    Would love to see a provider build a rack with boards shown in the video above. Great video and below are the links Jeff references in his video above (no affiliation):
    - Follow Uptime.Lab on Instagram
    - Get notified when the Kickstarter is live

  • FractionFrankFractionFrank Member, Host Rep

    We offer Raspberry Pi's as a service. https://RPiServers.com

    Would love to see some photos of these, do you put them into standard 19" racks?

  • PulsedMediaPulsedMedia Member, Patron Provider

    @niknar1900 said:
    I thought to myself if you designed a 1u compatible motherboard that accepted Compute Module 4, you could have the ethernet ports on the back. But then I saw this:

    that indeed is interesting, but i already see some means to optimize this further.

  • The problem with these embedded boards is that they're thermally limited. I've added heatsinks to all my pi's and rock64's and they're constantly at their CPU limit just idling in a room temperature room. You'll need active cooling to use them 24/7.

    The other hassle is KVM and bare metal access. I've switched to emmc rock64's after the third rpi SD corruption issue in as many years. And it's still slow AF.

  • @TimboJones said:
    The other hassle is KVM and bare metal access.

    I've had pretty good success with tiny pilot for that

  • @TimboJones said:
    The problem with these embedded boards is that they're thermally limited. I've added heatsinks to all my pi's and rock64's and they're constantly at their CPU limit just idling in a room temperature room. You'll need active cooling to use them 24/7.

    The other hassle is KVM and bare metal access. I've switched to emmc rock64's after the third rpi SD corruption issue in as many years. And it's still slow AF.

    To be fair, you need cooling for any DC processor so that's not such a big deal. As for SD corruption - you know you can netboot them, right?

  • @rajprakash said:

    @TimboJones said:
    The other hassle is KVM and bare metal access.

    I've had pretty good success with tiny pilot for that

    That's a lot of additional cost.

  • @ahnlak said:

    @TimboJones said:
    The problem with these embedded boards is that they're thermally limited. I've added heatsinks to all my pi's and rock64's and they're constantly at their CPU limit just idling in a room temperature room. You'll need active cooling to use them 24/7.

    The other hassle is KVM and bare metal access. I've switched to emmc rock64's after the third rpi SD corruption issue in as many years. And it's still slow AF.

    To be fair, you need cooling for any DC processor so that's not such a big deal. As for SD corruption - you know you can netboot them, right?

    Your Intel or AMD CPU likely came with the cooler for free and is a supported standard, not going to be a hack for an SBC.

    Netbooting adds hassle, latency, delays and additional failure points and still doesn't prevent corruption.

  • @TimboJones said:

    @rajprakash said:

    @TimboJones said:
    The other hassle is KVM and bare metal access.

    I've had pretty good success with tiny pilot for that

    That's a lot of additional cost.

    Sure but it's a one time investment and a great tool to have for any homelabber, not just SBC labbers.

  • PulsedMediaPulsedMedia Member, Patron Provider

    pi-kvm looks interesting as well, but not easy to get the hat + addons at the moment.

  • @TimboJones said:
    Netbooting adds hassle, latency, delays and additional failure points and still doesn't prevent corruption.

    Well if your complaint is SD corruption, not using the SD kind of prevents it!

    On the cooling front, I've no idea what you're doing to your "idling" Pis, but I don't have any cooling on any of mine that run 24/7 without any problems at all. Maybe my house is cold.

  • PulsedMediaPulsedMedia Member, Patron Provider
    edited January 2022

    ordered an Odroid HC4 for testing, along with XU4Q and MC1 :)

    We could fit 240 of these on a single rack, that is 480 HDDs at a total power consumption of approximately 4.2kW only! Bandwidth would be a odd ball to get price point low, every 6 units would share a 1Gbps link on best-effort basis. This saves on switching costs and bandwidth costs, high perf switches cost quite a bit per port on purchase + power: deep packet buffer switches are like 10€ per port REFURB, and consumes like 5W per port!. On the other hand a cheap unmaged 8port switch consumes like 5W off the wall, and per port price is like 2.5€. So per port cost drops to nearly 0 cost, and bandwidth peaks would be more limited without any software configs, and it's the peak use during peak hours which costs money! Not the off peak usage -- and no money wasted on configuring ports for 100Mbps.

    It looks like we could offer a limited run at 10€/Month each with 2x2TB 7200rpm HDDs + 1Gig network connection and 2x3TB for 13-15€/month. And go potentially as big as 2x20TB drives on each :)

    We shall see, and might offer a preorder once we have ourselves tested these a little bit :)

    Can you say CHEAP nextcloud/owncloud/seedbox dedicated?? :) :o

  • @PulsedMedia said:
    It looks like we could offer a limited run at 10€/Month each with 2x2TB 7200rpm HDDs + 1Gig network connection and 2x3TB for 13-15€/month. And go potentially as big as 2x20TB drives on each :)

    Now we're talking

    Thanked by 1PulsedMedia
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