Raspberry Pi Server Mark III • Hacker News Board

Re: Raspberry Pi Server Mark III

#41

Post by oarsinsync » Sun, Dec 20, 2020, 1:16 PM UTC

Galanwe wrote: post #25

contingencies wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Purpose: Learn linux clustering/diskless nodes. Advantages: Cheaper than conventional servers, limited physical form factor suitable for constrained environments such as apartments, luggage, etc. Low power consumption, suitable for mobile/off-grid/renewable. Recommended software: https://clusterlabs.org https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/admin-guide/nfs/nfsro... https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Diskless_nodes Commerc…

> Learn linux clustering/diskless nodes. Honestly, could be as valid with a setup that just involves running a bunch of VMs. > Low power consumption Yeah, well, a typical laptop should draw around 50W, which is what, like 0.05$ a day? > Commercial advantage: Run highly cost and power efficient data centers Hu, no, in terms of power efficiency per unit of work, you will not beat specialized hardware. > Infrastructure…

> > Learn linux clustering/diskless nodes.

> Honestly, could be as valid with a setup that just involves running a bunch of VMs.

Slightly less valid. You don't have the same IO latency between nodes using VMs unless you start messing around with artificial attempts at inducing latency on each node individually.

It's much easier to accurately simulate real world networking by not bothering to simulate and just using real world networking.

There's a huge difference between latency on a wire vs latency within a hypervisor, and you won't know what you've papered over through lower latency via VM until you move to real hardware.

Re: Raspberry Pi Server Mark III

#42

Post by scns » Sun, Dec 20, 2020, 1:18 PM UTC

OJFord wrote: post #10

canofbars wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its cool and fun and teaches you a skill at a low price point. There is essentially no functional reason to do this over a single high power server unless for some reason you need a bunch of ARM servers for something.

All fourteen Pis, even v4s (which are significantly hungrier), would be lower power (as in electrical draw) than even a feeble (as in compute power) traditional machine. If you can distribute your workload (or it's not intensive anyway), i.e. having no single machine with a faster processor, then I think it's a good choice, cheaper to run. Edit: I'm happy to be corrected if down-voters would like to reply... A Pi 4 d…

Did not downvote but desktops idle way below 100w.

Re: Raspberry Pi Server Mark III

#43

Post by andreareina » Sun, Dec 20, 2020, 1:19 PM UTC

Very cool. Do I understand correctly that there's no traditional backplane on this, power and data are both provide via ethernet?

Re: Raspberry Pi Server Mark III

#44

Post by thetanil » Sun, Dec 20, 2020, 1:20 PM UTC

Running a 6 node cluster of Pi4s at home now. Did some benchmarks. Long story short.

USB thumb drive boot disks are better performance and cheaper than SD cards.

Fans are completely unnecessary on a Pi4 with an aluminum heat shield style "case". They do run hotter than with a fan, but they will not be heat throttled with recent firmware.

Re: Raspberry Pi Server Mark III

#45

Post by skohan » Sun, Dec 20, 2020, 1:20 PM UTC

contingencies wrote: post #7

th3h4mm3r wrote: post #3

What could you do with a similar setup? I mean: what's the purpose and/or the advantages compared to a "classical" solution ?

Purpose: Learn linux clustering/diskless nodes. Advantages: Cheaper than conventional servers, limited physical form factor suitable for constrained environments such as apartments, luggage, etc. Low power consumption, suitable for mobile/off-grid/renewable. Recommended software: https://clusterlabs.org https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/admin-guide/nfs/nfsro... https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Diskless_nodes Commerc…

Is the power consumption really that good? I mean comparing to just getting a single 5950x or something would this actually win in terms of performance per watt?

Re: Raspberry Pi Server Mark III

#46

Post by tazard » Sun, Dec 20, 2020, 1:21 PM UTC

whymarrh wrote: post #32

z3t4 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could rent a couple of 1USD/month VPS, or if really on a budget rent a bunch of containers with ipv6 for just a few cents

Where does one find VPSs this cheap?

RamNode has some starting at $15/year on their OpenVZ platform. Have been happy enough with that for several years now, although it's quite limited as to what it can do in terms of performance. But as another commentor mentioned, check out LowEndBox. It's where I discovered this.

Re: Raspberry Pi Server Mark III

#47

Post by thetanil » Sun, Dec 20, 2020, 1:24 PM UTC

andreareina wrote: post #43

Very cool. Do I understand correctly that there's no traditional backplane on this, power and data are both provide via ethernet?

The Pi does not do poe natively. POE is available as a hat, but I have not seen one for the Pi4 yet. The hats are nearly as expensive as the Pi itself.

Re: Raspberry Pi Server Mark III

#48

Post by GeertJohan » Sun, Dec 20, 2020, 1:26 PM UTC

thetanil wrote: post #47

andreareina wrote: post #43

Very cool. Do I understand correctly that there's no traditional backplane on this, power and data are both provide via ethernet?

The Pi does not do poe natively. POE is available as a hat, but I have not seen one for the Pi4 yet. The hats are nearly as expensive as the Pi itself.

I'm using the existing PoE hat on several Pi4's in a production environment and it works great. Never had shutdowns or issues with power. Note that I'm not drawing extra power from any of the USB ports, so perhaps the existing PoE hat isn't sufficient when you have USB devices attached to the pi4.

Re: Raspberry Pi Server Mark III

#49

Post by thetanil » Sun, Dec 20, 2020, 1:26 PM UTC

thetanil wrote: post #44

Running a 6 node cluster of Pi4s at home now. Did some benchmarks. Long story short. USB thumb drive boot disks are better performance and cheaper than SD cards. Fans are completely unnecessary on a Pi4 with an aluminum heat shield style "case". They do run hotter than with a fan, but they will not be heat throttled with recent firmware.

Example case which does away with the need for fans is:

https://www.amazon.com/Geekworm-Raspberry-Computer-Aluminum-...

Re: Raspberry Pi Server Mark III

#50

Post by thetanil » Sun, Dec 20, 2020, 1:29 PM UTC

jojobas wrote: post #2

Surely one could make do with passive heatsinks on the Pis and use the back coolers?

Posted before I saw this comment. Yes passive cooling is fine with recent firmware and a good heatsink case. I have stress tested with the following case for hours with all cores pegged at 100% and there is no CPU throttling with passive cooling. They do run hotter, but they do not throttle. Old firware and bad cases will though. https://www.amazon.com/Geekworm-Raspberry-Computer-Aluminum-...