
My £60 ARM server - EwanToo
http://www.ewanleith.com/blog/956/my-60-arm-server
======
rwmj
Personally I wouldn't trust a microSD card for any production role beyond
being a bootloader. You'll be paged one day only to find you had to make a
time-consuming visit to your co-lo, and that all your data was irretrievably
gone.

The solution to this is to have one "real" PC acting as a NAS and serving
iSCSI. You would have to divide the extra cost of this PC across all the ARM
servers you have.

~~~
nico_h
Micro SD are notoriously bad for server usage, they are designed to store
infrequently changed files for a while, like mp3 collection, cameraphone
snapshots, apps etc... Going with a brand name might help.

In order to extend their lifespan, you might want to minimize the writes by
disabling some logs and the "last access" updates on files (`noatime` for "no
access times").

Some examples: [http://tombuntu.com/index.php/2008/09/04/four-tweaks-for-
usi...](http://tombuntu.com/index.php/2008/09/04/four-tweaks-for-using-linux-
with-solid-state-drives/)

~~~
icebraining
Instead of disabling the logs, you can put them on a tmpfs. You'll lose them
if the machine crashes or reboots, but it's still better than not having them
at all.

------
runeks
"[...] ARM servers are a big part of the future [...]"

Has anyone actually compared x86 and ARM doing some sort of comparable task,
and measured how much power they both consume performing the same task? I know
ARM uses a lot less power than x86, but if it uses 10 times as little power
but takes 20 times as long to do the same task as an x86 server chip, it still
uses more power. I'm not saying it isn't more power efficient than x86 (it
certainly has that potential, because of all the old cruft in x86), but I just
haven't seen any evidence that supports this claim.

Or am I missing the point? Is power efficiency not the main reason for ARM
servers?

~~~
mbell
In many server applications your not CPU bound but rather IO bound. In those
applications using the lowest power CPU makes sense. These are the
applications ARM seems to be targeting first. Examples: $5 month static + php
only website hosting market, front end load balancing, static file serving,
etc.

The other possible target is embarrassingly parallel work loads where you
really just want to cram as many cores into a given space as possible. Usually
the limit of how many cores you can put in a rack is either power or cooling,
not space.

Where you probably won't see ARM in the near term is on work loads that are
highly single threaded and performance critical. I think this is exactly the
type of situation your describing.

------
akr
I also use a small ARM server (SheevaPlug) since about two years and it can
hold up easily to VPS hosting. It runs everything I would run on a "normal"
server (Lighty, Dovecot-IMAP etc.), but needs nearly no power in comparison.

~~~
EwanToo
The SheevaPlug is cool, but it seems like the newest ones have gone a slightly
different route and thrown everything you could possibly want at it - wifi,
bluetooth, audio, etc?

That's all nice stuff, but just adds to the power and price for what should be
a dirt cheap, almost disposable, piece of equipment.

Though I would definitely appreciate gigabit ethernet on the beaglebone...

~~~
toyg
You can disable most of the extra stuff... I think all the options make these
devices much more flexible.

If you wanted a dirt-cheap, more modular component you'd be looking at Arduino
or Raspberry Pi, not a plug.

------
rmoriz
I build a couple of ARM "servers" out of a PandaBoard (dual core + 1 GB RAM)
and a self-made case (lasercutter)

<http://www.flickr.com/photos/rmoriz/sets/72157629535790241>

<http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:18645>

They're running Linaro, the Ubuntu-ARM-development-fork by ARM/Linaro.org

~~~
videmsky
Whoa! It's like a micro-server and a makerbot mated. Nice!

~~~
rmoriz
I even made a cheesy video ;-) <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vX61U_q6ksg>

Board: <http://pandaboard.org/>

OS: <http://www.linaro.org/>

------
darklajid
Another site that is unreadable on a mobile device because the options to
share the content are hiding the content itself.

Is there any browser/browser & extension to remove that... stuff? Maybe an
adblock filter, a greasemonkey script or something similar?

~~~
EwanToo
Someone else pointed that out, it's not good is it?

I've disabled the AddThis bar while I look into it (the caches might keep it
alive for a while though), hopefully there's a suitable solution.

------
lucian1900
I plan to do a very similar thing with my Raspberry Pi.

~~~
darkstalker
I want to replace my router with a Raspberry Pi, but seems impossible to buy
one

~~~
lucian1900
Just to make you feel bad, I've just been notified mine got shipped and I'll
get it soon :)

They are getting sent, just slowly.

------
nico_h
Anyone else blocked by the stupid cloudflare scam about not having 3rd party
cookies enabled meaning you have virus on your computer? And preventing them
from reading the article?

~~~
jgrahamc
Huh? I browse constantly with third party cookies disabled in Safari and
Chrome and never have a problem. I can see that site perfectly. And that's
certainly not how CloudFlare decides that your machine is likely to be
infected.

What are you seeing when you visit the site?

~~~
nico_h
I was browsing with firefox with 3rd party cookies disabled, and I saw this
message a few times. What irks me and triggered my kvetching is that I "played
the game" and did submitted the captcha 3 times and it still didn't work.
Twice in Firefox and once in Safari in private browsing mode.

Here is a screenshot, with my I.P. address at the bottom:

<http://imgur.com/n9xFG>

It looks scam-y too with the "google pays me $x a day" and "automated profit
package" ads.

P.S.: I remember seeing it on a blog post on jgc.org at least once, as well as
on joyoftech a ago but not today.

~~~
jgrahamc
Thanks. I'll take this up with the folks in San Francisco and see why you were
seeing that.

~~~
nico_h
Thank you for looking into it.

------
psc
Cool for a personal server, but there's one large downside—everything's
soldered on. Upgrading a server like this isn't really possible. And what if
something breaks? Unlike commodity hardware of the past, you can't just take
the server out, fix the broken component, and stick it back. Before ARM
servers take off, manufacturers will have to make components replaceable.

~~~
EwanToo
I think as long as the price remains under $100, the manufacturers will
consider the whole device a replaceable part on it's own.

It'd be a bit like sending out a hard drive component for an engineer to
replace, when the drive itself costs $100, it's just not worth the effort for
99% of installations.

~~~
psc
Perhaps, but for now, it's cheaper to make a data center out of traditional
commodity hardware.

Let's say that a hard drive (or whatever storage device) has a failure rate of
1% over 1 year. With traditional hardware, for every 100 computers you have,
you'll replace 1 hard drive. A new hard drive will cost a fraction of the
machine's initial price, let's say 1/5. So maintenance costs for storage
devices are 1/500 the initial costs per year, maybe a bit more if you factor
in the cost of the labor.

Now if you make the same cluster of servers out of ARM hardware, let's say
you'll need 4x the number of machines to get the same processing power. That's
400 machines. If the storage devices on these machines have the same failure
rate, you'll need to replace 4 machines per year. However, since you're buying
a new machine, you're don't get to pay for just the storage device. It costs
you 4/400, or 1/100 the initial cost to maintain the storage devices for your
ARM cluster per year.

A huge assumption here is that both types of hardware have similar initial
costs. So the point here is that it'll always be cheaper to compartmentalize
your losses, unless ARM devices are _much_ cheaper than traditional commodity
hardware. Intuitively, throwing away a whole machine when something breaks is
going to be a lot more expensive than just replacing the broken part. I don't
imagine that it's extremely difficult to make parts replaceable on ARM boards,
and it would definitely save some money, so I don't see why it shouldn't be
done.

(Also, I realize that the Beaglebone uses SD cards, which are cheap and
replaceable. But imagine that instead of storage devices, I'd used memory for
the example)

------
seclorum
I use my two Open Pandora's as build servers. They work just like any other PC
in the house, with the difference that they can be easily unplugged and
pocketed, as well. Fantastic little machines, and once you get a development
environment up and running, they function extremely well.

------
rbanffy
I'd love to see a Aubrey Isle like processor based on ARM cores - with many
ARM cores sharing a 2 GB pool of fast memory.

The Intel cores on the Aubrey Isle chip are fairly large and take up most of
the silicon on the die. An ARM-based design would be much smaller and cheaper
to manufacture.

Now that I said it, I wonder how much more expensive would be a RAM chip
incorporating an ARM core versus pure memory. It would be interesting to have
"smart memory" that could do things like "sha-384 this range and ping me back
when you're done". Assuming other threads are not using that same component
for other activities, it could be done basically "for free".

~~~
mathnode
Best thing about ARM? It's cheap, so you can just pick and choose between
distributed or shared memory models.

------
rythie
If it had a lot more memory that would be interesting.

Though really you can get a 256Mb VPS for £5/month <http://prgmr.com/xen/> and
you don't have a setup charge or unreliable hardware.

~~~
rwmj
ARM has strange limits on the amount of memory. The Versatile architecture
supports up to 256 MB max. The Versatile Express architecture has a 2GB limit
(and no PCI!)

Then you have to remember that ARM is presently 32 bit, so you're going to
have trouble going over 4 GB at all, which is currently a very small amount
for a serious server. 64 bit ARM isn't going to be widely available for at
least another 2 years, and at what cost we just don't know (but it's not
likely to be £60/server).

~~~
mbell
The Cortex-A15 can address 1TB of ram, its still 32bit so there is the
requisite per process limit. Last I heard Cortex-A15 SoC's will be available
in volume this year.

------
nl
There have been mentions on the OpenStack mailing list of various experiments
NTT is doing with ARM servers. I don't think there is much information public
about it yet though.

------
hmottestad
HP has their Project Moonshot which is a rack server solution using multiple
Calxeda ARM servers attached to a main board for power and networking.

[HP] <http://h17007.www1.hp.com/us/en/iss/110111.aspx>

[Engadget] [http://www.engadget.com/2011/11/02/hp-and-calxedas-
moonshot-...](http://www.engadget.com/2011/11/02/hp-and-calxedas-moonshot-arm-
servers-will-bring-all-the-boys-to/)

------
gizzlon
On a related note, VIA makes small motherboards with embedded CPU's. They're
not as cheap, but they act more like "real" pc hardware, are i386/686
compatible and use very little power.

I've run a fan-less EPIA board at home for a couple of years, and it's nice.
Took some time to find the right board though..

<http://www.viaembedded.com/en/products/boards/>

------
pinkeye
Checkout TonidoPlug2 (<http://www.tonidoplug.com/tonido_plug.html>). It has
512 MB DDR3 RAM, Gigabit Ethernet, WiFi b/g/n and in-built enclosure for SATA
II HDD. You can boot it directly from the SATA instead of internal flash. All
the right things you need in a personal server. Also it runs debian squeeze.

------
Maakuth
I run a GuruPlug with filesystems on a LVM volume built from e-sata and usb
hard drives. It's very fine for my personal needs, except the GP's crazy heat
output. What I hope is that some manufacturer built ARM boards with loads of
SATA controllers. That way one could build a very affordable large NAS's.

------
shirro
If someone (looking at SanDisk) were to make a range of SD cards for servers
and lightweight ARM desktops that would be of real interest. Because the
current stuff out there for phones and cameras is of variable quality and is
about the worst thing about these new lightweight arm systems.

------
jarofgreen
Interesting article but pls fix website for mobile readers
<http://twitpic.com/9o9q35>

I would have commented on your blog but on Firefox the "about me" floats over
the disqus column so I can't.

~~~
lucaspiller
I've noticed most HN posts from blogs suffer this issue... I was thinking of a
"Your Site Doesn't Work On Mobile" notification service...

~~~
jarofgreen
YES DO IT (I would help if I had spare time, I'll just wish you good luck
instead)

------
jk
_"Micro-SD card performance is highly variable, and generally rubbish"_

Agree with that. I use a pandaboard as a build server and I felt it is a lot
efficient to use NFS than running off an SD card.

Ewan, have you tried USB HDD instead of SD card?

~~~
EwanToo
I think that's probably the next experiment, I'm not sure if I'd got for a HDD
or a very small USB SSD to keep the power usage down - at the moment it's
under 0.5W, a HDD will be several times that.

------
videmsky
Is anyone eyeing the new Atom for servers? Thinking about a bunch for a modest
low power cluster. <http://goo.gl/fWdwd>

------
j_col
Very cool, I've been wanting to do something similar with a personal server
for some time.

------
Vizualni
Excellent idea!

------
xxiao
use Marvell's sheevaplug is better off for this. beaglebone is really for
industrial control, beagleboard are for generic purpose while pandaboard is
for mobile computing. SD cards are made for consumer class cameras, but you
can buy industrial level SLC SD, for $50 per 4GB, in that case I will just go
with SSD.

