[kwlug-disc] Small, ARM64-based computers (was: Raspberry pi 4)

[Jason Eckert]

Here's a nift Raspberry Pi-based demo from Kubecon back in October (single
node master K8s cluster with 6 worker nodes):
https://twitter.com/unixterminal/status/1449101622718525441?s=20

I'd be lying if I said I didn't start specing out the cost of the hardware
for an impulse buy shortly afterwards...

On Tue, Dec 7, 2021 at 2:47 PM Mark Steffen <mark at steffen.ca> wrote:

> Yes... I'd love to build an arm-based kubernetes cluster.  And your
> concerns are shared.  I'd love something like:
>
> -Octa core A7x (A72 is a bit old hat these days, something faster
> ideally) or even a 4/4 BIG little approach with A55s and A75s or something.
>
> -8GB RAM minimum but 16GB or SODIMM slots as an option (ECC support??)
>
> -Dual Gigabit Ethernet with POE support and optional battery (lots of
> good reasons for this, one being you could speed up synchronous writes
> in a cluster by making them asynchronous since you should be able to
> survive a sudden power outage) and regular power plug and support for
> automatic switching between the two for redundancy
>
> -eMMC, dual SATA, dual NVME M.2, PCIe slot, USB3
>
> -a form factor conducive to clustering/rackmounting (status lights/power
> positioned that some one could make a case/power backplane for it where
> you could slide the SBCs in and out of easily for repair/maintenance)
>
> Kubernetes with Gluster would be my preference, if both ethernet ports
> supported POE then you could have both switches able to provide power
> and configure primary/secondary VLANs but in a way that if everything is
> good you have a gigabit dedicated to regular network and a gigabit
> dedicated to cluster sync network for Gluster.  OS would be on the eMMC
> and the NVME M.2s would be gluster bricks.
>
> That would be my dream ARM cluster setup though.  Some nodes would be
> Galera or Postgres database nodes to cluster that service.  But it
> should allow for a very scalable and resilient base for whatever
> applications you'd want to throw at it.
>
> Mark
>
> On 2021-12-07 2:28 p.m., Rick Moen wrote:
> > Quoting Ronald Barnes (ron at ronaldbarnes.ca):
> >
> > [Pine64 Quartz SoC, https://wiki.pine64.org/wiki/Quartz64 :]
> >
> >> That PCIe expansion slot is intriguing!
> > In sub-model A.  There's also sub-model B, which offers M.2.
> >
> >> The value of which cannot be overstated.  Adding expansion storage
> >> to my rPi 4 would be more expensive than anticipated and somewhat of
> >> a hassle.
> > The 8GB LPDDR4 RAM option is likewise getting up into real-computer
> > territory, and I note that sub-model A also has one (1) SATA 3.0 header.
> > The immediately preceding ROCKPro64 SoC
> > (https://wiki.pine64.org/wiki/ROCKPro64) also merits respect, but maxes
> > out at 4GB LPDDR4 RAM.
> >
> > I keep watching the ARM single-board computer marketplace for units
> > fully suited to home-server usage, and ideally want the hardware to
> > include:
> >
> > o  8 GB or greater RAM, so that I can comfortably run a pair of VMs
> >     under a hardened small host system.  There are certainly other
> >     ways to do this, but the two-VMs model provides a production server
> >     host alongside an in-development beta host that will be rolled out
> >     on flag day by simply promoting (re-IPing) the beta to production,
> >     and starting a new beta VM.
> >
> > o  RAID1 redundant main storage on something better/faster/more-reliable
> than
> >     USB 3.0-attached or microSD or eMMC storage.  Like, guys?  NVMe SSD
> >     storage on an M.2 slot is a terrific idea, but why not two slots,
> please?
> >
> > o  Fanless, silent, and low-power, which is where ARM64 helps.
> >
> > The generally meritorious hardkernel.com ODROID SoCs mentioned upthread
> > share with the Pine64 being less limited than the RPis, but to my
> > knowledge none of their units yet ticks all of my checkboxes for an
> > in-home server platform.
> >
> > The marketplace doesn't recognise the existence of a home-server niche
> > (which is understandable, as those of us who want robust computing
> > infrastructure at home are "rara avibus".  Over the last decade, the
> > niche that seemed closest to filling home-server needs, it seemes to me,
> > has been the HTPC (home theatre PC) one, like low-power AMD-based
> > mini-ITX boxes with a pair of SATA drives.  With the rise of ARM64 /
> > aarch64, we are now seeing additional possibles.
> >
> >
> >
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