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Raspberry Pi server clusters

morgaine

One of my current intentions is to play with server clustering once the Raspberry Pi is in volume production and the 1-per-person restrictions are lifted.  I have a long-term background in parallelism and concurrency --- my doctoral research was in the topic, and I lectured on it later as well, so it's quite dear to my heart.  The very low price of the board makes this feasible with a monetary outlay far below anything else, so I'm really looking forward to an Rpi clustering project.

 

I'm sure that I'm not the only one thinking about Rpi+clustering. image  If anyone here has this kind of application in mind, or just general interest in the subject, please keep in touch and post any interesting links you may find on the topic.  Once there are millions of the boards around, this could be a very popular area. image

 

Morgaine.

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  • That fits in well with my interest in introducing low-power sustainable computers into the network environment. The only difference is that I am working on plans for a low-power server using all SSDs. After I lauch my desktop which is still in beta sometime in the next few months, the server is next along with some investigation of mini-clustering. It would be interesting to compare stats later on in my project in terms of energy foot print and performance. Right now I'm working in the mini-itx format and looking at the mini (3.5") format for a follow-on. Another area to explore clustering in is VmWare envionments and even setting up mini SANs.

  • in reply to Former Member

    > "introducing low-power sustainable computers into the network environment"

     

    I like your phrase a lot, Bob. image

  • in reply to morgaine

    I'm pretty proud of the "sustainable" part considering I built a fully functional desktop PC from off-the-shelf parts. It has no moving parts other than the on/off switch, meets or exceeds all international standards for contect of toxins and green efficency, can be constructed with nothing more than a screw driver and only uses 33 watts of power at peak operation. The PC is 95% recyclable. I am looking forward to boards like RPi coming up in performance enough to drive a SSD and handle more memory which would allow it to drive more resource intensive OS's...(read Windows). As it is, RPi looks like a pretty good platform for running a VmWare image. I hope to experiment with that.

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  • in reply to morgaine

    I'm pretty proud of the "sustainable" part considering I built a fully functional desktop PC from off-the-shelf parts. It has no moving parts other than the on/off switch, meets or exceeds all international standards for contect of toxins and green efficency, can be constructed with nothing more than a screw driver and only uses 33 watts of power at peak operation. The PC is 95% recyclable. I am looking forward to boards like RPi coming up in performance enough to drive a SSD and handle more memory which would allow it to drive more resource intensive OS's...(read Windows). As it is, RPi looks like a pretty good platform for running a VmWare image. I hope to experiment with that.

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  • in reply to Former Member

    The "sustainable" word was one of the things that attracted me to RepRap 3D printing, because the project founder Adrian Bowyer mentioned that old extruded items could (in principle) be melted down and recycled into plastic filament ready for your next print.  He gave a very alluring example of when your child outgrows her sandals, you melt down the plastic, add a bit more filament, and print out a slightly larger pair ... with the added punch line that PLA polymer is biodegradable and can be made out of corn that you've grow in your back yard.  image

     

    Of course, reality is a lot different to principle, and extraction of pure ABS or PLA from old sandals would be difficult, not to mention that extruding filament to the required fine tolerance is not something that you can do at home (yet).  And I'm not into farming corn.  Still, the thought is there.

     

    The real reason I'm mentioning 3D printing though is in answer to your building low-power sustainable computers, because 3D printing makes it so easy to build enclosures that evolve with your requirements.  My printer isn't completed yet, but once it is, it'll be near the top of my list of applications to create pluggable modules for various things, including microcontrollers and Raspberry Pi cluster nodes, as I discussed here earlier.

     

    The low power consumption of ARM and the ability to construct plastic enclosures to suit your specific needs seem to go together rather well, and provides ample opportunity to reuse parts from obsoleted or failed equipment.

     

    Morgaine.