Raspberry Pi Server Mark III • Hacker News Board

Re: Raspberry Pi Server Mark III

#71

Post by tutfbhuf » Sun, Dec 20, 2020, 2:19 PM UTC

z3t4 wrote: post #23

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…

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

From my experience the cheapest reliable ones in terms of storage, cpu, ram performance come at about 3$/month (+-50 cent). I can recommend Hetzner.

Re: Raspberry Pi Server Mark III

#72

Post by kingosticks » Sun, Dec 20, 2020, 2:21 PM UTC

ekianjo wrote: post #22

Tepix wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you need a cheap dedicated (for privacy) server to run a mail server and perhaps a private cloud with Nextcloud, this is ideal.

Nextcloud would be much cheaper to run on a x86 board.

Can you expand on why?

Re: Raspberry Pi Server Mark III

#73

Post by JohnJamesRambo » Sun, Dec 20, 2020, 2:23 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…

Thanks for this, the other comments had left me, a layman, thinking this was actually useful instead of just for fun.

Re: Raspberry Pi Server Mark III

#74

Post by notwedtm » Sun, Dec 20, 2020, 2:24 PM UTC

contingencies wrote: post #31

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

You absolutely could. But you wouldn't learn how to build a system that recovers from yanking a power or network cable, wouldn't own it, and wouldn't be able to run it on your terms. You'd need a credit card with an American-run payments network to operate, with a declared identity and a bank account, for which a prerequisite is a few months of stable living and income in a particular jurisdiction, itself something l…

> You'd need a credit card with an American-run payments network to operate, with a declared identity and a bank account, for which a prerequisite is a few months of stable living and income in a particular jurisdiction,

None of this is true.

Re: Raspberry Pi Server Mark III

#75

Post by thetanil » Sun, Dec 20, 2020, 2:27 PM UTC

morganvachon wrote: post #58

thetanil wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Example case which does away with the need for fans is: https://www.amazon.com/Geekworm-Raspberry-Computer-Aluminum-...

I like this one, a little more expensive but makes the Pi into a NUC style SFFPC: https://www.waveshare.com/pi4-case-argon-one.htm Edit to add the fan is optional, so it can run fanless with no throttling.

looks cool, and the breakout board is nice, but they don't show how it attaches to the pi. it's aluminum yeah, but does it actually do anything for heat dissipation?

Re: Raspberry Pi Server Mark III

#76

Post by nebalee » Sun, Dec 20, 2020, 2:32 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…

Don't forget that Pis also draw quite some power while idle. The Pi 4 draws around 3.4 Watts [1], or around 2.7 Watts since they are running headless in a server setup you'd probably disable HDMI [2]. Times fourteen that's 37.8 Watts just sitting there. An idling headless Desktop PC will be below that for sure.

[1] https://magpi.raspberrypi.org/articles/raspberry-pi-specs-be...

[2] https://www.pidramble.com/wiki/benchmarks/power-consumption

Re: Raspberry Pi Server Mark III

#77

Post by make3 » Sun, Dec 20, 2020, 2:39 PM UTC

ak39 wrote: post #66

This is so exciting. Is this type of "movement" (trend) likely to see data centers coming back on premises for enteprise markets? (ie. back from cloud)

I don't think this will have (or is meant to have) any effect on professional applications. This is just for the educational and cool factor.

Re: Raspberry Pi Server Mark III

#78

Post by throwaway4good » Sun, Dec 20, 2020, 2:42 PM UTC

ies7 wrote: post #55

throwaway4good wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I challenge you to find a single application where a setup of 14 raspberry pi's will beat the new mac mini.

Maybe some ram based application? Opening 100gb csv in pandas? Redis with more than 8gb data?

I doubt it - each cpu core only has access to the 4 or 8 GB that is on its machine - to communicate to other parts of the setup it will have to go over network or a shared drive. I think that will be much slower than a highly integrated device like the mac mini just using its hard drive.

Re: Raspberry Pi Server Mark III

#79

Post by exabrial » Sun, Dec 20, 2020, 2:43 PM UTC

That is a damn good looking 3d print wow.

My only beef with RPIs as servers is disk I/O is terrible. If that's been solved, I'd love to know! If the SOC has PCI-E lanes that were accessable externally I feel like the server side would really take off

Re: Raspberry Pi Server Mark III

#80

Post by rwmj » Sun, Dec 20, 2020, 2:45 PM UTC

exabrial wrote: post #79

That is a damn good looking 3d print wow. My only beef with RPIs as servers is disk I/O is terrible. If that's been solved, I'd love to know! If the SOC has PCI-E lanes that were accessable externally I feel like the server side would really take off

The Compute Modules have (optionally I think) eMMC which is not especially fast, but fast enough and appears much more reliable than SD cards.

The RPi 4 also has support for USB 3 disks using UAS. I've attached a couple of SSDs to mine. https://rwmj.wordpress.com/2020/09/24/raspberry-pi-4-running...