Talos II Lite

TLDR; $2k for a 8-core POWER9 system.

But the page comes with 15 ™ signs.

This got me sufficiently interested I started poking around and looking at pricing ("Add to cart") of all the different systems available.

There are actually a few. In decreasing order of price:

- Both the 2U and 4U rackmount servers are $5,475 (4U: https://secure.raptorcs.com/content/TL2SV2/purchase.html, 2U: https://secure.raptorcs.com/content/TL2SV1/purchase.html). The only difference is 2 versus 3 SAS HBAs, 16 vs 24 drive bays, and 720W vs 1200W redundant PSUs, respectively. (The webpages are really easy to visually diff! I'll bet they did that on purpose.) Both come with two 18-core POWER9s, and 64GB RAM.

- The flagship Secure Workstation comes in next at $4,925 (https://secure.raptorcs.com/content/TL2WK2/purchase.html). This ships with two 4-core POWER9s and 32GB.

- The "Desktop Development System" follows close behind at $4,375, and has one 4-core POWER9 and 16GB.

- There are also various motherboard-only options; the base option (no CPUs, no RAM) comes in at $2,325.

- Finally, the listed system comes in at $1,399. That's impressive.

The big caveat is that this price is motherboard-ONLY. Apparently you get an enclosure, but no CPU, and no RAM.

- A 4-core CPU is $375, (= $1,774)

- 8-core is $595, (= $1,994)

- 18-core is $1,375, (= just get a Talos II?)

- 22-core is $2,575. (= definitely just get a Talos II. And get two CPUs (= $5,510).)

As for RAM, the board uses DDR4; I do not know enough to say if it "must" be ECC. I'll assume it does (I vaguely recall reading somewhere that using the wrong kind of RAM (even if it will fit in the socket) can fry things sometimes, don't know if it applies here). Talos doesn't SKU discrete RAM, so there's that as well. (32GB seems to float at around US$250-$300 or so; Google's giving me AUD$550-$600, AU pricing is always all kinds of crazy.)

The final catch (noted in the footnotes at the bottom) is that the Talos II Lite cannot be upgraded to dual CPUs. Huh!

The Users' Guide linked on the product info page is for a "T2P9D01" motherboard (using a direct link, but I found the info page for the PDF at https://wiki.raptorcs.com/wiki/File:T2P9D01_users_guide_vers...). The oldest version of this file is from 16 April - so it's fairly new - however page 1 of the PDF shows a motherboard with 2 CPU sockets.

If "cannot" is truly literal (and it seems so - I can't see Raptor Engineering ever using a "buy an unlock code to enable socket 2" approach), well, hopefully they're just using existing boards but not soldering in a bunch of components. (Just because wasting the electronics would be sad, no other reason.)

Maybe someone knows more about this new board (? / configuration).

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I cannot do a comment like this without...

- Talos™ II Secure Workstation

- 2x 22-core POWER9 CPU

- "Second POWER9 Processor with HSF" - I have no idea what this does but it sounds very useful

- 128GB ECC DDR4

- 500GB NVMe

Total: $13,825

:D

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A datacenter should start stocking this hardware and making it publicly available.

Because all models of the POWER9 have hardware virtualization. Making a fleet of POWER9 KVM VPS blades is totally feasible by just buying these systems. (I say that because I'm not aware of anywhere else you can get a POWER9 box - and a secure one, what's more.)

So, I'm wondering... if someone went and...

- Talos™ II 4U Rack Mount Server

- 2x 22-core POWER9 CPU

- The 2nd-processor HSF thingy

- 1TB RAM

- 500GB NVMe

Total: $23,475

...how many VMs would they be able to viably run per host/node? On 1TB of RAM. Envisaging a, uh, economically-optimized "high RAM, low CPU" scenario where the hosts are packed kinda tight.

FWIW, Contabo offers a configuration a bit like that (of course on x86), where you can get 6GB of RAM for like ~$10/mo. Compiling Chrome took over 10 hours, but pretty much everything else I threw at it back when I had it didn't choke that badly.

POWER9 VPS offerings have come and gone. It'd be nice (and fun) for someone independent to offer a small number of nodes.

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I just discovered that Raptor seems to offer https://integricloud.com/. Seems kinda interesting; reading https://integricloud.com/content/base/faq.html, it's obvious they have the right idea about security.

I'm a bit perplexed at the red text at https://integricloud.com/content/base/software.html:

> NOTE: The source packages required to build reproducible versions of our node firmware and software stack are only available to active users of the IntegriCloud™ platform, auditors for active users of the IntegriCloud™ platform, and security researchers.

Security through obscurity much? :/

I don't quite understand the rationale here.

It's a fast, Windows-proof machine. What else can we ask for?

My biggest complain is that it looks too much like a PC by default. I remember the distinctive looks of the beige-and-purple Sun and always colorful SGI boxes.

But I totally understand why one would no go for a custom case when they are trying to make it less expensive. Heck... I may get one.