Re: [eX-bulk] : Re: Rasberry pi - high density
On 2015-05-13 19:42, na...@cdl.asgaard.org wrote: Greetings, Do we really need them to be swappable at that point? The reason we swap HDD's (if we do) is because they are rotational, and mechanical things break. Right. Do we swap CPUs and memory hot? Nope. Usually just toss the whole thing. Well I keep spare ram around cause it's so cheap. But if CPU goes, chuck it in the ewaste pile in the back. Do we even replace memory on a server that's gone bad, or just pull the whole thing during the periodic "dead body collection" and replace it? Usually swap memory. But yeah, often times the hardware ops folks just cull old boxes on a quarterly basis and backfill with the latest batch of inbound kit. At large scale (which many on this list operate at), you have pallets of gear sitting in the to deploy queue, and another couple pallets worth racked up but not even imaged yet. (This is all supposition of course. I'm used to working with $HUNDREDS of racks worth of gear). Containers, moonshot type things etc are certainly on the radar. Might it not be more efficient (and space saving) to just add 20% more storage to a server than the design goal, and let the software use the extra space to keep running when an SSD fails? Yes. Also a few months ago I read an article about several SSD brands having $MANY terabytes written to them. Can't find it just now. But they seem to take quite a long time (data wise/number of write wise) to fail. When the overall storage falls below tolerance, the unit is dead. I think we will soon need to (if we aren't already) stop thinking about individual components as FRUs. The server (or rack, or container) is the FRU. Christopher Yes. Agree. Most of the very large scale shops (the ones I've worked at) are massively horizontal scaled, cookie cutter. Many boxes replicating/extending/expanding a set of well defined workloads.
Re: [eX-bulk] : Re: Rasberry pi - high density
Greetings, Do we really need them to be swappable at that point? The reason we swap HDD's (if we do) is because they are rotational, and mechanical things break. Do we swap CPUs and memory hot? Do we even replace memory on a server that's gone bad, or just pull the whole thing during the periodic "dead body collection" and replace it? Might it not be more efficient (and space saving) to just add 20% more storage to a server than the design goal, and let the software use the extra space to keep running when an SSD fails? When the overall storage falls below tolerance, the unit is dead. I think we will soon need to (if we aren't already) stop thinking about individual components as FRUs. The server (or rack, or container) is the FRU. Christopher On 9 May 2015, at 12:26, Eugeniu Patrascu wrote: On Sat, May 9, 2015 at 9:55 PM, Barry Shein wrote: On May 9, 2015 at 00:24 char...@thefnf.org (char...@thefnf.org) wrote: So I just crunched the numbers. How many pies could I cram in a rack? For another list I just estimated how many M.2 SSD modules one could cram into a 3.5" disk case. Around 40 w/ some room to spare (assuming heat and connection routing aren't problems), at 500GB/each that's 20TB in a standard 3.5" case. It's getting weird out there. I think the next logical step in servers would be to remove the traditional hard drive cages and put SSD module slots that can be hot swapped. Imagine inserting small SSD modules on the front side of the servers and directly connect them via PCIe to the motherboard. No more bottlenecks and a software RAID of some sorts would actually make a lot more sense than the current controller based solutions. -- 李柯睿 Avt tace, avt loqvere meliora silentio Check my PGP key here: http://www.asgaard.org/cdl/cdl.asc Current vCard here: http://www.asgaard.org/cdl/cdl.vcf keybase: https://keybase.io/liljenstolpe
