121–130 of 347 posts
The interesting thing would be if you could stack them and cloud compute.
Also, you'll need to setup a cloud cluster... A nontrivial task.
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... and the Linux version will have half the RAM (1GB instead of 2GB) and a fourth the storage (8GB instead of 32GB). I think I might pass on this.
Yup. Seems like pointless, instant-gratification consumerism when server boxes are far faster, cheaper and greener. Worse, it's an un-upgradable device to buy and throw away. Anyone that needs more horsepower, it's far simpler to either trade up, use a real server or just use a cloud/VPS similar to AWS.
How many of these devices would you have to buy and throw away to match the environmental material footprint of even one 1U rack-mount server? They're tiny. Orders of magnitude matter.
(Similar effect: However "disposable" USB flash drives may superficially seem, compared to the floppies they replaced they are nothing. And I do not just mean that the USB sticks can hold lots of stuff... I mean that if you pile a normal computer user of the 2015 era's USB sticks in one pile, and a normal computer user of the 1990 era's floppy disks into another pile, the floppies would tower over the entire pile of USB drives and almost certainly have a much larger environmental footprint. I hedge only for the possibility that the nasty flash memory might dominate the floppies manufacturing, but the floppies do irreducibly have an awful lot more plastic in them, so I'm still guessing the floppy pile comfortably "wins".)
What are the existing products this will compete with?
In the past couple of years there have been dozens of similar products based on ARM SoCs out there.
(This product line is DOA.)
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Yup. Seems like pointless, instant-gratification consumerism when server boxes are far faster, cheaper and greener. Worse, it's an un-upgradable device to buy and throw away. Anyone that needs more horsepower, it's far simpler to either trade up, use a real server or just use a cloud/VPS similar to AWS.
It's been too long since I built a PC so I'll take your word on the faster/cheaper argument, but greener? Can you really build a server box that uses less power than a 1-2A USB device?
Not sure, but I think the point was that its "greener" because you can swap out individual parts over time using the same case and ultimately producing less waste. You may also argue that individual components are easier to recycle.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yup. Seems like pointless, instant-gratification consumerism when server boxes are far faster, cheaper and greener. Worse, it's an un-upgradable device to buy and throw away. Anyone that needs more horsepower, it's far simpler to either trade up, use a real server or just use a cloud/VPS similar to AWS.
"server boxes are far faster, cheaper and greener. Worse, it's an un-upgradable device to buy and throw away." How many of these devices would you have to buy and throw away to match the environmental material footprint of even one 1U rack-mount server? They're tiny . Orders of magnitude matter. (Similar effect: However "disposable" USB flash drives may superficially seem, compared to the floppies they replaced they…
Also, how much power would be lost by all those cheap bricks compared to a single, efficient switching power supply?
It also would be 65 systems to maintain.
Renting a fraction (via cloud/VPS) of a green server (good PUE DCs and LP gear) is far cheaper and greener. But more importantly, waste fewer computing resources.
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This is totally unfeasible unfortunately. Either you support running the VM on the stick inside the host device's OS (supporting every major OS), without requiring root access nor installing anything. Or you boot from the stick and include display, keyboard and mouse/trackpad/touch drivers for every potential device you're going to plug it into. And for your last option (TV/monitor using phone/tablet IO) you'll also…
Without metric tons of engineering effort for a questionable use-case. The cheaper and more sensible options are: bigger laptop or run the workload elsewhere.
Yes, it's hard, and not quite doable today. But, there are millions of people working on making the components of this solution better.
It's so attractive to carry around a computer in our pockets (our "phones") and it's really not much of a stretch to envision a near future where the thing in our pocket is our "local data/projects" that we can plug into any larger display or keyboard /IO on demand.
Before you know it, it's going to seem archaic to have local working data on any other device than the one in your pocket. And it's going to seem archaic that any nice large interface (screen or keyboard) is tied to only 1 device.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yup. Seems like pointless, instant-gratification consumerism when server boxes are far faster, cheaper and greener. Worse, it's an un-upgradable device to buy and throw away. Anyone that needs more horsepower, it's far simpler to either trade up, use a real server or just use a cloud/VPS similar to AWS.
It's been too long since I built a PC so I'll take your word on the faster/cheaper argument, but greener? Can you really build a server box that uses less power than a 1-2A USB device?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's been too long since I built a PC so I'll take your word on the faster/cheaper argument, but greener? Can you really build a server box that uses less power than a 1-2A USB device?
>Can you really build a server box that uses less power than a 1-2A USB device? Not sure, but I think the point was that its "greener" because you can swap out individual parts over time using the same case and ultimately producing less waste. You may also argue that individual components are easier to recycle.
If form factors don't change, reusing the mounting hw, PSUs and enclosures can be doable. Some web shops wait until boxes die entirely before replacement while IT shops lifecycle out all gear (usually everything but racks) in 4-6 years.
These hotdog USB sticks aren't upgradable at all and they're limited to the processing power of 5-10W.
Hardware like that makes me yearn for one with no wireless and a pair of Gigabit Ethernet ports to use as a firewall and server. It's fairly interesting to note what it's not: Android or Chrome OS. I suspect Microsoft will do quite well out of this, especially in the digital signage market, anywhere which is reasonably price sensitive but if developer time and cost can be reduced then they get a lot of leeway. Still,…
> Hardware like that makes me yearn for one with no wireless and a pair of Gigabit Ethernet ports to use as a firewall and server. Unfortunately, general purpose hardware and operating system needs a fair amount of juice to route and inspect 1gbps of traffic. Best performance per watt I've found is the Edgerouter Lite but that has dedicated routing acceleration hardware to achieve what it does with the little mips pr…
Being honest, it's a bit hacky for consumers...you'd be good to know Vyatta (what it uses under the hood) to get the most out of it, since there are still some things the web UI can't do (L2TP VPN being one, or PPTP without a Radius server for auth). However, it's a heck of a lot cheaper, smaller, and more power efficient than my previous P4 box running pfSense with Intel Pro/1000GTs, so I'm pretty happy with it.
I do think it'd be super awesome if Ubiquiti released a pfSense or m0n0wall-based EdgeRouter with the same hardware acceleration...I'd gladly pay $200 or so for that, but the ERLite is damn hard to beat for $100.