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Raspberry Pi Colocation

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Re: Raspberry Pi Colocation

#131

Post by AshamedCaptain »

KennyBlanken wrote: post #108
AshamedCaptain wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not hard for x86 laptops to idle below 4W (see Surface https://www.notebookcheck.net/Microsoft-Surface-Go-Pentium-6... , even Pro ones with screen on they idle well below 10W). With 10W just for the SoC you get into desktop or gaming laptop territory. I have a full x86 system that idles at 1.7W _at the wall_ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26639929 . This is an off-the-shelf ASUS PN40 mini-desktop, running…

> I have a full x86 system that idles at 1.7W _at the wall_ A single stick of DDR1/2/3 ram uses more than that alone. SATA SSDs are typically 0.5-1W idling. The mobo chipset, figure at least a few watts That doesn't even account for CPU idle power consumption. Whatever you're using for power monitoring isn't accurate. Probably doesn't fully integrate, instead using sampling, and the sampling rate isn't high enough to…

It's DDR3L, not DDR3. Even the active power use of the stick is not going to be > 0.5W. And RAPL/ACPI can show the CPU/chipset (respectively) consumption, and it averages less than 1W. The official ASUS measurement is at ~3.7W https://csr.asus.com/english/file/ErP_PN40.pdf , and that is with Windows, 8 GB stick and 2 SSDs (personally I couldn't get it to idle at less than 6-7W with Windows).

Again: there are laptops that idle at these values, and this is even worse than a CPU laptop -- it's an Atom. Think S0i3... which keeps the RAM (in SR), chipset, and a shitton of things awake and yet consumes way less than 1W.

> Whatever you're using for power monitoring isn't accurate.

Sure (as in: one can never disagree with that), but the point is: it's still at least half the consumption of the Raspberry Pi 4, and lower than the consumption of a Raspberry Pi 3 where I disabled almost everything. For which apparently the measurements match to the 2 digits what I can find online, which I can compare since it's much easier to use the same software-hardware combo.

This is not ARM vs x86. It's just the RPI that is crap regarding power management, since by design _they are not even trying_. They just wanted to be cheap. There are many (ARM and other) CPUs that idle even lower than that. If they wanted to be efficient, they would beat the many year old Atom in an instant. Probably already do in (peak) performance/watt.

Re: Raspberry Pi Colocation

#132

Post by alblue »

joosters wrote: post #9
sokoloff wrote: post #3

I know that co-location means “customer owned hardware”, but in this case, I think I’d way rather rent data center owned RPis and just pay them money rather than sending in hardware, having to cycle out hardware if/when it fails, etc. It also means the colo is running whatever random power supply I send them, which seems like something they’d want to avoid and means that there’s all the inefficiency of 12 supplies pe…

Mythic Beasts do PI hosting with their own servers, and are a very good company: https://www.mythic-beasts.com/order/rpi

I’ve used Mythic Beasts for over a decade now, and they are a great company for all sorts of hosting, not only raspberry Pis.

Plus, they actually serve the Raspberry Pi foundation website and the raspian images /from Raspberry Pis/ so they know what they are doing.

Re: Raspberry Pi Colocation

#133

Post by bullen »

mr_sturd wrote: post #96
bullen wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

gen 1.5? Are they still running those for free? I had "free" colocations in Sweden and Holland that then turned not free then got cancelled altogether. Pi clusters are best for home hosting on your own fiber. Also those Pi 4 need heatsinks like so: http://move.rupy.se/file/final_pi_2_4_hybrid.png

They were a revision of the first gen Raspberry Pi. A bit more stable and seemed to not corrupt the root filesystem after a few hours, which the initial one seemed to invariably do for me. They're not offering it any more, no. I moved to self-hosting after that. Even got a static IP address for it.

I find static IP a bit overpriced when you can easily build your own dynamic IP solver with a few instances with static IPs that you need anyway to get low latency around the globe, also most home IPSes block ports 25 and 53 so if you want mail and dns you still need additional boxes.

I'm using google (bad I know but they are the best currently) as my main 3 continent provider (my own HTTP with JSON db, SMTP and DNS implemented from scratch) and I have redundancy in asia on AWS and in central US with IONOS, that way I have the cheapest double redundant cloud you can get with the most customers in low latency reach!

Re: Raspberry Pi Colocation

#135

Post by xg15 »

elcritch wrote: post #115
xg15 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think local hardware makes sense for LAN-only sites - e.g. a company wiki, a media center or a file storage with web interface. For anything that is supposed to be visible on the internet, I'd always use a hosted server - if nothing else, because I really don't want to open an ingress into my personal home network, even if my ISP permitted that. For use-cases were you have to handle certain incoming requests even t…

That pagekite looks handy! I’ve recently got gigabit fiber at home but my routers ipv6 firewall is crap. This seems easier than just making a custom vpn to a cloud instance.

It seems to be what Mozilla IoT/WebThings uses under the hood. So that's at least one credential :)

I stumbled over the service by trying to understand how the WebThings gateway was supposed to work.

https://iot.mozilla.org/docs/gateway-getting-started-guide.h...

https://github.com/WebThingsIO/registration_server/blob/mast...

Re: Raspberry Pi Colocation

#136

Post by pvillano »

stirfish wrote: post #127
Dylan16807 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So much of a computer PSU is dedicated to 12 volts, though. I can get a 5V 60A supply for $27 and save a lot of unnecessary complexity. Though either way you might be better off with a series of USB hubs.

I use a 40 port usb charging station to power my raspberry pi cluster, but I don't like it because the fan sounds like a hair dryer running

if you're using amazon.com/dp/B077R5BVVR/ removing just the outer enclosure and removing that fan should be safe, but it might not be the loudest fan...

otherwise the quietest PC is the one in a different room, but you probably already know that

Re: Raspberry Pi Colocation

#137

Post by 3xa »

sokoloff wrote: post #3

I know that co-location means “customer owned hardware”, but in this case, I think I’d way rather rent data center owned RPis and just pay them money rather than sending in hardware, having to cycle out hardware if/when it fails, etc. It also means the colo is running whatever random power supply I send them, which seems like something they’d want to avoid and means that there’s all the inefficiency of 12 supplies pe…

Thanks for your comment about the power supplies. Not every power supply will work. a) As stated in the FAQs and again when successfully booked: " Note that the power supply should have at least 3.0A / 5.1V power. It must be CE certified and support DC power." b) The DCs are located in Germany: 230 V - DC.

I have also read all the other comments on this subject: Yes, currently each Pi runs with its own power supply.

Currently, our team is developing a dedicated power supply for all Pi slots within the rack. Then it will also be possible for users to turn the power on and off via the colocation dashboard. However, the development will still take a little time. The reason for this is that some components are not immediately available and especially not in large quantities. See analogously the availability of Pis.

Re: Raspberry Pi Colocation

#138

Post by 3xa »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #2

I like the idea in theory, but I can’t entirely agree with the “Green” designation. Putting 12 Raspberry Pis, 12 USB SSDs, 12 switch ports, and cabling and power supplies for all of the above adds up quickly. From a pure compute-per-watt perspective using typical cloud workloads, I’d still expect a run of the mill shared cloud server to be more efficient. It would also allow for more burst overhead for individual wor…

Hi,

"Green", now removed from the title, but still on the landingpage refers to the power used by our data center. Our data centers operate inside wind & solar parks, therefor we only use green energy. If there is no wind or sun we directly purchase green energy. Of course every DC is connected to the public grid for continuous operation.

Re: Raspberry Pi Colocation

#139

Post by 3xa »

bennyp101 wrote: post #4

From https://examesh.de/en/docs/colocation/accessing-the-pi/ : "Instead of using a public IP the Pi is accessed by combining a public hostname with dedicated TCP ports. The hostname points to one of the ExaMesh gateways and is assigned to the colocation along with the available TCP ports in the booking process." So maybe useful for an extra node for redundency, but maybe not as useful as having an actual address. Per…

Thanks for mentioning it. Yes, there are quite a few use cases as these are already implemented by customers: Backup, Sync, Nodes (e.g. BTC Full Nodes), Relay, ...

Re: Raspberry Pi Colocation

#140

Post by 3xa »

ciex wrote: post #45
solarkraft wrote: post #26

I'm gonna ask the dumb/obvious question: Why would I want this? It's certainly not for the compute. Isn't the point of a Raspberry Pi controlling periphery on the edge? But that's not possible here? ??? It's not even needing ARM cores, as those are now cheaply offered by all the cloud computing companies. Is it just for some cheap fun? But if I'm going to host something on cheap amateur grade hardware, why would I no…

You can attach a big ass SSD to this and still pay just $6 a month. This is unique I think. I wonder how they would feel if you add your custom electronics to the Pi's GPIO connector.

Thank you, as far as we could find out, this is really unique.

GPIO: Currently there are no plans for this yet. It is not possible at the moment, we point this out during checkout and on the colocation administration page. However, we think nothing is impossible. If you have a use case, feel free to write me at colocation@examesh.de ;)

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