University of Glasgow builds Raspberry PI Cloud Server | Hacker News Reader

University of Glasgow builds Raspberry PI Cloud Server

raspberrypicloud.wordpress.com

49 pointsvegasbrianc14 comments

This is cool stuff, I have also been trying to get LXC containers running on the RaspberryPi. I used their guide and it went pretty well. I want to create a downloadable image so that you can skip over all the begining steps, and get into the fun stuff quicker. Just haven't had the time yet.

I'm now trying to get Docker running on the raspberryPi, if you want to help, checkout my notes here: http://kencochrane.net/blog/2013/05/running-docker-on-a-rasp...

I wonder how the performance (absolute and per watt) would compare to equivalently cheapish x86 server. Quick look at dell/hp shows a basic 16-thread server with 32G ram costing about $3000, which places it in the same performance and price-range (vs. 56x$35=$1960 just for the rpis).

edit: I realize that this is an educational project and as such the performance does not matter that much compared to the educational value provided by running largish number of nodes.

It's tempting to think that raspberry pi makes sense as a sort of commodity blade server system, racking up loads of cheap, tiny CPUs... but it turns out that that might not be the case.

UK hosting company Mythic Beasts has a history of playing with unusual hosting devices to maximize hosting capacity versus cost - both hardware and power; they provide a hosting offering that runs on racks of Mac Minis, for example.

Now, they also took a look at the raspberry pi - and they set one up and running as a mirror of the Raspbian Linux apt repository. This was their write-up: http://blog.mythic-beasts.com/2012/07/20/raspberry-pi-self-h.... The tl;dr from that is this line:

"Is this sensible? We’ve had a few customers ask us if the Raspberry Pi would be a sensible device for hosting on as it’s very cheap and very low power. Unfortunately it’s also very slow for this kind of application and the supporting hardware is very bulky."

To be fair, the Mac-mini rack has real purpose: http://hackaday.com/2012/12/09/160-mac-minis-one-rack/

I think the real promise of combining single-board computers into a grid like this is the potential to provide utility computing starting at a low cost without the curse of underprovisioning (http://www.xaprb.com/blog/2010/06/01/under-provisioning-the-...). I envision a rack full of single-board computers with specifications such that a hosting provider can rent out whole computers with specs and prices similar to a 1 GB Linode.

To achieve this goal, I think one would need a single-board computer with roughly these specs: a SoC that scores at least 1000 on Geekbench; at least 1 GB of RAM; at least 8 GB of flash storage competitive with SSDs from a few years ago; 100 Mbps Ethernet; sized such that a 2U enclosure can hold 32 of them plus an Ethernet switch; priced around $100. If any of my expectations are way off, in either direction, I'd be happy to be corrected.

Very cool. I believe there is a market for really tiny VPS's assuming the costs can be kept low. Things like remote monitoring, or VPS come to mind. Also, it would be interesting to see if RPi follows Moore's law, so while currently these instances seem very underpowered, in a few years they would gain some muscle.

They won't because the foundation doesn't want to make RPi's They want to get into teaching a huge number of people about hacking on electronics. They needed the pi because there was nothing suitable to do that on for around £20.

The founders has said it would be a long time, if ever before considering making a Raspberry Tau.

If competitors spring up and make ever more powerful units they might not have to. They don't want to get into competing with arduino for example, that's not what they are for.

Currently, yes. However, what happens as components get cheaper? A year from now, will there be a RAM chip that is the same price as now but with 2x the RAM? One can hope I suppose.

> If competitors spring up and make ever more powerful units they might not have to.

Given the popularity of the Raspberry Pi that seems inevitable (and I am looking forward to it).

> I believe there is a market for really tiny VPS's assuming the costs can be kept low.

Isn't AWS micro pretty much as low as you can go?

It gives you a whole 613 MB RAM! I am talking about VPS's with 32 or 64 MB RAM. Also, Using ARM processors means much lower power usage. It's not good for running web apps, but there are plenty of other uses (VPS's, static HTML sites, etc).

I have an order in for three computers in the new EOMA68 form factor. It's basically entire embedded computer systems in a PCMCIA style card. The ones I'm waiting for are 1.2ghz Quad-Core SMP Cortex A7 processors, 2 gigs ram, SATA controller, gigabit controller, etc. It's a perfect ARM-based server that fits on a card that is ideal for running off of a server backplane. The whole thing will consume less than 10 watts too and is passively cooled.

My goal is the same that you're describing. I want to see if I can make a 3u server case that has 96 slots in the front to insert these cards with either pass-throughs on the backplane to hook up SATA SSD's on the backside, or use a SAN for a hosting environment. Oh, best of all? The cards look like they'll be less than $50 each. ROI on a VPS environment would be just a few months.

http://rhombus-tech.net/allwinner/a31/ http://elinux.org/Embedded_Open_Modular_Architecture/EOMA-68

1)I'm extremely excited for pi and what it means to education, 2)kids won't do this...sorry 3)this is old news...sorry 4)I upvoted.

Edit: typo

Hi michaelxia, this project has been in the works for awhile but, the updated post from today shows some really interesting potential on the Management layer as well as the project's current status. Really cool stuff!!

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