[Rdo-list] Cheap, quiet hardware for a small RDO installation?

Tom Buskey tom at buskey.name
Wed Dec 3 18:31:30 UTC 2014


My intro to Openstack was a talk by someone using 12 HP micro servers in
his office.

- They are quiet enough.
- Have an internal USB port to put the OS boot on so all 4 disk bays could
be storage
- Have IPMI (iLO/iDRAC) so remote power toggle can work
   = He got an addressable PDU bcause the IPMI wasn't reliable enough
- Have a PCIe x1 for a gigabit ethernet card
   = there are 1 and 2 port gigabit ethernet cards that work for < $50
- RAM could be upped to 8 GB (later systems can do more)

He added 1 or 2 network switches and was able to power & run it in his
office.

I think one node is a provisioning server so everything could be PXE
booted.  If you don't have that, I'd want an IPMI that can use virtual
storage and remote console.  Supermicro IPMI comes with it (and I've found
the power toggle to be reliable enough).  iDRAC is a license.  Desktops
typically do not have IPMI.

I think you'd want at least 2 network ports for your nodes and 3+ on the
controller.
The limiting factor will be RAM, not cores.  I'll take a 32 GB quad core
system over a 12 core 16GB system.

FWIW - does anyone know of a < $500 system (motherboard, cpu, power, case)
that can go to 64 GB?




On Tue, Dec 2, 2014 at 10:39 AM, Dave Neary <dneary at redhat.com> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I'm looking for ideas of mini PCs I can use for a small RDO cloud -
> looking at maybe 3 shuttle PCs, each with "enough" disk (maybe 800GB
> total storage) and RAM (8GB per PC enough?). Also, I'm wondering if 2
> NICs is reasonable to ask for. My desired price point is *low* - all 3
> for under $1000 would be ideal, failing that, as close to it as possible.
>
> Anyone have recommendations for hardware that would serve this process?
>
> Thanks,
> Dave.
>
> --
> Dave Neary - NFV/SDN Community Strategy
> Open Source and Standards, Red Hat - http://community.redhat.com
> Ph: +1-978-399-2182 / Cell: +1-978-799-3338
>
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> Rdo-list mailing list
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