Pinode: Raspberry Pi in the Cloud • Hacker News Board

Re: Pinode: Raspberry Pi in the Cloud

#31

Post by nwh » Sat, Mar 23, 2013, 2:35 AM UTC

cloudmaster wrote: post #30

zenocon wrote: post #24

Can I ask why (without trying to sound awful and steal someone's front page thunder)? If you want to do something interesting with the Pi you'll probably be wanting to connect other hardware to it. You can't when it is in the cloud. Otherwise, it is just a general purpose Arm/Linux board that has far less power than anything else you could get in the cloud-o-spehere...so I'm just genuinely wondering what you would us…

As an alternative to low-end VPS's it's not the worst idea in the world at $5 a month. It'd cost more than that to upgrade your home's cable internet connection to be able to serve traffic decently.

For $5 a month you could alternatively get a reasonably beefy VPS at DIgitalOcean / another provider.

Re: Pinode: Raspberry Pi in the Cloud

#32

Post by olefoo » Sat, Mar 23, 2013, 2:56 AM UTC

MatthewPhillips wrote: post #13

gambiting wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They do increase capacity regularly, just keep checking.

Is there any way to be notified when slots open up? I've been checking off and on since it was announced and it's always been "out of stock".

Clearly you need to run a cronjob that checks every minute and texts you when it becomes available...

Re: Pinode: Raspberry Pi in the Cloud

#33

Post by DigitalDesignDj » Sat, Mar 23, 2013, 3:44 AM UTC

I call BS, I would really like to see someone prove that these are all really raspi units and not just Debian Squeeze instances running on a virtual server.

Also, I have a raspi myself. The beauty of the raspi is not that you get to eat the pie, its that you get to make it yourself. Cloud connected? I think you mean Internet, not cloud. You know, unless these are Debian Squeezes on a virtualized box. Don't have the time? Then you can't have this hobby. End of rant.

Re: Pinode: Raspberry Pi in the Cloud

#34

Post by lcampbell » Sat, Mar 23, 2013, 4:06 AM UTC

mschuster91 wrote: post #28

How do you do the DVI video capturing? Framegrabbers and IP KVM modules are dead expensive, AFAIK - and how do you handle reformatting?

Despite the fact that the OP is in jest, I found myself wondering the same. The best we could come up with at the office was to get some SDHC cards that are hardware read-only lockable (the spec says they exist [1], but I wasn't able to find any to purchase). On these SDHC cards, you stick a PXE-like implementation that allows it to pull a disk image off another machine in the DC, install it to an attached USB drive, then chainboot to that disk.

This setup would allow customers to upload an image which is effectively burned and attached to the hardware during an automated provisioning process. When the node is powered down, the USB drive is wiped by the next provisioning.

The customer is expected to set up the image so that it provides ssh (or what have you) on boot. Since the failure state of, say, a kernel panic in this setup is complete data loss, there's no need for KVM or anything.

It probably wouldn't be a very competitive service, but as mentioned elsewhere, for $5/month most applications are likely better off with a VPS anyway.

--

[1] http://superuser.com/questions/354473/is-the-lock-mechanism-...

Re: Pinode: Raspberry Pi in the Cloud

#35

Post by lsc » Sat, Mar 23, 2013, 4:25 AM UTC

mschuster91 wrote: post #28

How do you do the DVI video capturing? Framegrabbers and IP KVM modules are dead expensive, AFAIK - and how do you handle reformatting?

eh, I've been looking at doing something like this (hosting PI units) and the OOB solution I'm considering is soldering on a serial console.

I would also need to figure out some automated bootloader setup, of course.

Re: Pinode: Raspberry Pi in the Cloud

#36

Post by sltkr » Sat, Mar 23, 2013, 4:40 AM UTC

MatthewPhillips wrote: post #10

gambiting wrote: post #8

Or you could just buy a Raspberry PI, and send it to EDIS in Austria: http://www.edis.at/en/server/colocation/austria/raspberrypi/ And there you get FREE symmetrical 100mbit connection with no monthly payment. And you can always get your Raspberry Pi back if you need to, you just need to pay a few euros for postage.

This has been "out of stock" since right after it was announced.

There are a number of other similar offers. Just Google for "free raspberry pi hosting" (+ your country, maybe).

For example, here's a Dutch hosting company:

   https://www.pcextreme.nl/en/
   http://raspberrycolocation.com/home/

You can send them your Raspberry Pi for free (or buy one from them) and they will provide free power and network connectivity (500 GB/month). Offer is valid for an indefinite period of time, but at least 12 months.

Re: Pinode: Raspberry Pi in the Cloud

#37

Post by Arelius » Sat, Mar 23, 2013, 5:29 AM UTC

olefoo wrote: post #32

MatthewPhillips wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there any way to be notified when slots open up? I've been checking off and on since it was announced and it's always been "out of stock".

Clearly you need to run a cronjob that checks every minute and texts you when it becomes available...

If only I had a cheap and minimal ARM based computer running in the cloud I could run this cronjob on...

Re: Pinode: Raspberry Pi in the Cloud

#38

Post by wyager » Sat, Mar 23, 2013, 6:21 AM UTC

gambiting wrote: post #8

Or you could just buy a Raspberry PI, and send it to EDIS in Austria: http://www.edis.at/en/server/colocation/austria/raspberrypi/ And there you get FREE symmetrical 100mbit connection with no monthly payment. And you can always get your Raspberry Pi back if you need to, you just need to pay a few euros for postage.

How do they make money?

Re: Pinode: Raspberry Pi in the Cloud

#39

Post by chuable » Sat, Mar 23, 2013, 8:05 AM UTC

DigitalDesignDj wrote: post #33

I call BS, I would really like to see someone prove that these are all really raspi units and not just Debian Squeeze instances running on a virtual server. Also, I have a raspi myself. The beauty of the raspi is not that you get to eat the pie, its that you get to make it yourself. Cloud connected? I think you mean Internet, not cloud. You know, unless these are Debian Squeezes on a virtualized box. Don't have the t…

Click the buy button then come back and rant some more.

Re: Pinode: Raspberry Pi in the Cloud

#40

Post by nodata » Sat, Mar 23, 2013, 8:08 AM UTC

MatthewPhillips wrote: post #10

gambiting wrote: post #8

Or you could just buy a Raspberry PI, and send it to EDIS in Austria: http://www.edis.at/en/server/colocation/austria/raspberrypi/ And there you get FREE symmetrical 100mbit connection with no monthly payment. And you can always get your Raspberry Pi back if you need to, you just need to pay a few euros for postage.

This has been "out of stock" since right after it was announced.

It's regularly available. Like now, if you click the link.