overview for bobdvb

Is an ARM cluster a good idea? by bobdvb in c/homelab@selfhosted.forum

[-] bobdvb@alien.top 1 points 10 months ago

There are plenty of examples of Arm machines running at scale now, so that's a pretty narrow perspective.

Is an ARM cluster a good idea? by bobdvb in c/homelab@selfhosted.forum

[-] bobdvb@alien.top 1 points 10 months ago

£5 for a USB NIC - £100 £3 for a PoE to 5V DC splitter - £60 £2 in short cables - £40 Shelf? £20-50

PoE Switch I already have spare Leaf switch I already have spare Network storage I have in abundance.

Cost wise it's not prohibitive, about £250

I think the biggest worry is, as you say, it might not be the most stable or impressive compute.

2

Is an ARM cluster a good idea? (alien.top)

submitted 10 months ago by bobdvb@alien.top to c/homelab@selfhosted.forum

18 comments fedilink

I have the possibility of getting my hands on a practically unlimited supply of S905X2 Android boxes, they have 2GB of RAM and 8GB eMMC, only 100Mbit LAN but USB-3 as well.

I was joking around with colleagues, what about making an ARM cluster out of them? Use the 100Mbps port as a management port and add a USB3 Gigabit or 2.5G adapter for general traffic. Power the cluster by PoE using PoE to 5v splitters from a smart, management switch with PoE (10W each box?).

Lets say I got 40 boxes with 4 cores, that's 160 cores and 80GB of RAM. It could run Armbian with Kubernetes or something lighter. I personally have no use for it, but it could be a fun proof of concept?

Tell me why I shouldn't do this! Tell me why it won't work and why I'd be wasting my time.