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@ElliotJ it's pretty much luck of the draw. The main factor in an SD cards lifespan is the level of writing. So just avoid the cheap Chinese no-name brands and you should be fine. (They'll have less recovery blocks)
My main concern would be the situation where an SD card dies. Are you guys going to pay remote hands to replace a single SD card? Or are you willing to travel down to the DC just to replace a card?
I'd be interested in this.
How about a USB ethernet controller for disk access? One reviewer got 312mbps with http://www.amazon.com/Plugable-Gigabit-Ethernet-Network-Adapter/dp/B003VSTDFG/ref=pd_bxgy_e_text_b
I would most definitely purchase one of these if you put it up for sell @Damian. What DC would it be in?
Accidentally hit the thanks button >_<
That costs almost as much as the Raspberry Pi itself
interested
A Raspberry Pi takes up 7.1 square inches of area. This rack tray/shelf thing provides 190 square inches. Should be able to comfortably fit 10-12 units on it.
Hmm interesting topic. I'm listening
@Damian
Oh by the way, if it's not obvious already, I'm interested
Let me know if/when you get these up and running!
Interested
.
Maybe you could offer some sort of rent to own plan for the first year and then bring the price down thereafter?
Or you could charge a setup fee which would cover say half the cost of the rpi but lower the cost in the long run, this would make customers more likely to stay with you
I am interested in this
I'd be interested if you could find a way to get good read/write speeds
@Damian: in your cost calculation don't forget the cost of the IPs...
Im planning on chain loading my one so it boots from a USB HD, if I can get that working I'll colocate some with 1TB HDs
@Daniel
That would make an ideal backup server
Good luck with your testing
Would surely be interested in this!
@Damian do you think you can pull this off? this is really interesting service.
OS reinstalls would be the only roadblock unless you have some trick up your sleeve.
very interested
Make a robotic arm that takes the SD card, puts it in a computer, then formats it and then puts it back into the Raspberry Pi.
Of course if you put a chain loader on the SD card so it boots from a HD, and also put a recovery image on the SD it would mean that you could just boot into the recovery image and reinstall.
Ready-to-swap SD cards. You can then restore your own data if you want to.
Interested
Of course you could get the SD from Lexar...
“Every memory card does have a theoretical limitation to how many times it can be reformatted (less so on cheaper cards which use a lower quality of Flash Memory), but the number is huge. Unless you format your card 10 times a day, it should last a lifetime. And…of course…if you have a Lexar Professional card, it has a lifetime warranty and can be replaced if anything does go wrong.” - Jeff Cable Lexar Sales Manager.
Setting up and offering the service? Yes.
As @pytohost mentioned, one of the roadblocks is how to do OS reinstalls. I'm not sure if most people would actually keep them for more than a month, so there would be churn. And this would be churn that I can't automate. I suppose I could pre-load additional SD cards with an OS, then swap them out whenever one of us goes to the datacenter, but that doesn't seem like a very good solution.
@Damian does it support PXE boot? If yes, then OS reloads could be automated, more or less.
Mmm...that would be interesting
@rds100: It does not. From the FAQ:
Which brings up another point: If the OS gets hosed somehow, the only way to reboot it is to physically remove power from the unit. Maybe something like this could be utilized to switch the USB power on/off.
(edit) I meant this. Quite pricey, though.
i have been trying to get a rasperry pi since the first day they were released and you are talking about getting 10 pieces of them :P
Yeah I don't see this working out. Your going to end up losing money.
Far better, your probably get higher disk I/O rate too.
Maybe a warning that you'll reset/reinstall OS every X day. Or, for power, use 1 Raspberry with the GPIO ports to control relays for the power