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Building a development cloud on budget
I'm looking to put together a development cloud - a full featured one at that, on a budget. So here is what I'm thinking about compute nodes :
- AMD FX-6 6100 AM3+ cpu
- Motherboard to go with it
- 32 GB of ram
- 180 watt PSU
- 32GB SSD for local storage
I can get one of those 'sets' for just under £190.00 ; For Network, a HP ProCurve J9028A / their 1800-24G should do, and available cheaply off ebay. For Storage, I am thinking of repurposing my HP MicroServer with 4x500GB SATA's.
So four 'compute nodes' + switch + cables and disks for the MicroServer should clock in at £1,000.00 still need some sort of a case or rails ( intend to host this at home ).
What am I missing ? What might I be better off with ? £1k for 24 cores, 128gb of ram and 4 physical nodes seems like a good deal to me, but could I do better ?
- KB
22/Jan/2013 02:57:00 pm, 9 comments
Comment from: Adam Thompson [Visitor]
I've feel looking at some options recently; please note bothwww.buildablade.com
and
www.atxblade.com
for reasonably non-proprietary options for rack-mounting generic ATX/ITX gear.
22/Jan/2013 @ 18:29
Comment from: Matthew [Visitor]
Does the HP Micro Server have a good CPU or is that going to be a bottleneck?How about a RAID of the SSDs being served over channel bonded network links to the compute nodes?
And where are you going to put it - thought you had downsized your local installation?
22/Jan/2013 @ 22:37
Adam,Both of those are US based setup's - and unlikely to match these sort of prices.
23/Jan/2013 @ 01:02
Matthew,The HP MicroServer is an AMD N40L, its a dual core at 1.5 Ghz and has 8 gb of ram. As an object store it should be fine in performance terms. And should also handle logging for the instances without a problem. The base OS images are just under a gig or so, and for now I'm quite keen on keeping them local to the instance.
w.r.t hosting - under the table! I'm not going to buy ATX cases's for these, just pile them up one on top of the other, with a couple of inches of headroom for each 'layer' for circulation.
23/Jan/2013 @ 01:07
I seem to have miscalculated.. at £190 a node, i can only get 16GB of ram not 32GB. So maybe getting the 8 core AMD's and reducing node count from 4 to 3, with 32gb on each might be a better, more cost effective option for the same core / ram count.- KB
23/Jan/2013 @ 12:26
Comment from: Sergio [Visitor] 
If you do not mind, where are you getting those components? Did you take a look to the X79 boards from Intel? What do you want to install on it?
23/Jan/2013 @ 13:17
Sergio, I'm going AMD here, the intel platform is far too expensive to be worth while. w.r.t Buying the motherboards, this is a Gigabyte SKT-AM3+ 970A, so wherever I can get a reasonable deal is OK. For the 8 core cpu's i was considering the AMD fX8150, ram from crucial and corsair 430watt psu.
what would you suggest ?
23/Jan/2013 @ 13:56
Comment from: David Hrbáč [Visitor]
Karanbir,These are the components I'm successfully using:
GIGABYTE MB Sc AM3+ 970A-D3, AMD 970, 4xDDR3
4x DIMM DDR3 8GB 1600MHz CL11 512x8 ADATA
Sapphire VGA ATI Radeon HD 5450 HM, 512MB DDR3 VRAM, 64-bit, 650/800, DVI, HDMI, VGA, PCI-E bulk
CPU AMD FX 8-Core FX-8120 3.1GHz 16MB cache 125W socket AM3+, BOX
2x INTEL PRO/1000 PT Desktop Adapter , PCI Express, (Full i low profile)
Node like this works pretty fine. BTW it is also capable to run ESX 5.0/1.
Regards,
David Hrbáč
08/Feb/2013 @ 10:07
Comment from: mike t [Visitor]
R u using virtualization? If yes .make sure the one u choose is compatible with all the hardware
02/Mar/2013 @ 14:57