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Raspberry Pi dedicated server?
With production ramping up on these, should be able to volume order soon.
Was thinking of a trial run of 10 or so, with an 8gb SD card, for $4 to $5 per month. I don't think it would be much more than a toy, but people buy VPS's with less resources...
Anyone interested in this?
Thanked by 1dirk
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sounds nice
Maybe, but seems a little expensive =P. Maye we can buy our hardware and rent colo with you?
EDIT: Nevermind, thought about it. Maybe a little bit less expensive and that may be good chance. any trials, maybe?
I'd subscribe.
A fun little low end dedi sounds cool.
Sounds like a great idea ! :-)
/interested
I'd buy one
Register here to express an interest ...
It'll be like 1998 all over again.
It'd be interesting to try, don't expect customers to keep it.. :P
This.
/interested
/interested
@Damian
I've previously thought about how it could work racked. Loads of them crammed into a 2U box, for example. I'll see if I can find the designs I did, but I'm fairly sure you can cram a few dozen in 2U.
Also, it /could/ be better to run the storage of an iSCSI, since SD write speeds are pretty crappy, if not, USB hard disks aren't exactly out of the question.
I really did consider this at one stage. However, I just can't see the benefits for the customer. Sure, they would have dedicated resources, but the bus speed and disk access would be so slow that it wouldn't be worth the price they pay.
You could put the disk on iSCSI, however you have three problems:
To be honest, in our industry, the best use I can see for a Raspberry PI is for the hosts to use them for their backend systems.
I intend to build myself a monitoring device that mounts on my office wall powered by a Raspberry PI that shows me all the charts etc..
I thought about iSCSI too. It's network port is 10/100 only, and 100mbit is about 12 megabyte/sec, while most brand-name SD cards are at least 8 to 10 megabyte/sec write, so I didn't think the added cost/complexity of a SAN would be worth it. Of course, if it ends up taking off and being popular, then it would be....
USB hard disk is still viable, though.
@Damian
SD cards aren't exactly designed for... say... a database hammering it 24/7.
I'd be concerned about the lifetime of the cards more than anything.
Why cards? USB disks ftw
I wouldn't trust that on a Raspberry Pi tbh ;p
@liam: No :P
@ElliotJ: Ah yes, another good point
@yomero: Well, SD cards are cheap. I can get a 4gb SD card for $7. $35 for the raspberry pi, plus $7 for the SD card = $42. Meaning at $5 per month, it'll be paid off in 9 months. And if it ends up not being popular, then it wasn't that big of a waste of money.
Cheapest USB drive on Newegg right now is $58. $58 + $35 = $93 / $5 = 19 months.
I was thinking that I could fit at least 10 of them, plus a cheapy 12-port Cisco switch, and a USB hub for power, on a single U. I haven't really done any further research, though.
Unfortunately yes, currently getting disks is hard...
But the SD cards are freaking slow
I think the issue in putting these in a rack would be the cabling and you would need multiple switches in just one rack, Unless you had the main switch and then multiple cheap hubs or something of the sort.
The advantage of selling Raspberry PI's would be the low Investment involved, It is definately something I would consider.
Heres a example of my rack setup.
42U Rack, ---> 48 Port Cisco 3550 Switch(Cheap L3) ---> PDU/Or are they USB Powered?(I think they use usb adapters) ---> Other Cheap 48 Port Hubs ---> Bunch of Cables ---> 30U Space Remaining ---> Bakers Shelves ---> 3 x 12 RPi's per U.
Hate and Rate on my amazing plan.. The Cisco 3550 would have a 100Mbit Dedicated Uplink, Then cheap switch would have a 10Mbit Uplink.
http://www.scan.co.uk/products/32gb-kingston-sdhc-secure-digital-high-capacity-card-fast-class-10
From what I recall, 2U would work better since you could mount them sideways. Although I didn't consider cooling >_>
Using right angled micro-usb chargers could also help with space requirements. Though, I can see this turning into a huge rats nest if you don't cable it all nicely.
There would not be much heat from them, The power is 3.5W per RPi.
Using right angled micro-usb chargers could also help with space requirements. Though, I can see this turning into a huge rats nest if you don't cable it all nicely.
@Jacob
The main cost with that would be replacing those SD cards when they fail. Not if - When.
They're made for hipsters to record their 'new age punk with a vintage feel religious iconography' and crap, to then throw onto Instagram or... Tumblr. Which they only do once in a while, not 24/7.
That's what I was thinking ;3
That's what I was thinking. Mount the Pi's to a rack shelf or something, put a Cisco 3512 (which are cheap, have uplink ports, and are managed) on the other side of the rack, uplink the 3512 to the rest of our network. This way all the network cables are contained.
The point of going with a managed switch is that the Pi's don't have power control, so I need to figure out some other method for controlling unruly clients. Therefore, put each Pi on it's own vlan. Something wicked happening? Drop the vlan.
Good point. Amazon inadvertently gave me a 16gb SDHC for free, maybe i'll do some constant read/write testing on it and see how long til it dies.
I'd bet it'd last a day. :< You could stretch the lifespan on a production system by disabling swap completely though, and assume that no idiots will try to run the next YouTube on it.
It might be an idea to check out some mobile phone forums (xda-developers springs to mind) to see how often their SD cards die on them, since Android tends to let you save apps to the memory cards, and phones are generally on 24/7.
True, but the phones aren't I/O intensive, and no 24/7
So, my micro SD cards have like 2 years with me and no issues.