This time round I got into carpentry for my project. Something that became both expensive and trickier than I had thought when I started. My carpentry knowledge is limited to (high-)school lessons, so take it easy on the results.
The project became more expensive than expected. Some 6000 SEK [~$740] including a whole bunch of tools (mill, jig saw, circular saw). Made do with 'Biltema' tools [the IKEA of tools] and returned the first mill after 1 hour of use. The other stopped after around 2 hours so then I fixed that one myself (took apart the start-button and modified it a bit).
The project consists of:
- 10/100 Mbps switch
- Nexus 7
- 10A 6 port USB charger
- 4 x Raspberry pi 3
- 4 x 8GB SD card
- TP cables + USB cables
- Oak
- Plexiglass
Anyway, you'd all probably rather see pictures than words.
- Nexus 7 with realtime data for all nodes.
- 'Economically' bought 8GB, not class 10, but thinking of running a 2.5" HDD for the controller node.
- Sleeved all the cables, then realised that they didn't fit with the sleeving. Could only strip them and do again.
- First test with 2 x USB hubs that didn't deliver enough current at start-up.
- Flip-up "chassis"
- My modified netdata page showing real-time data for all nodes, including the temperature.
Thanks for posting! I'm actually updating the cluster right now, and I have a Pi2 version, a Pi3 version (still in testing, not live yet), and a Pi Zero version (very slow, but same thing is the size of a plum!).
I'll be presenting on it at this year's php[tek], and will also post a few YouTube videos and blog posts about it separately.
Of course it's not as fast as my 5-year-old used Lenovo... But it's great for educational purposes (before anyone starts asking why you'd buy a bunch of Pis when one small laptop beats them performance-wise many times over).
I definitely get the educational appeal. Not just in construction and configuration. This should make a great platform for distributed computing development/testing/experimentation. What is the total build cost of a 6 unit system?
Mostly because of the community around the Pi. Interestingly, though, the ODROID C2 may be a much better option. I just don't know if I'll end up picking up more than one of them just yet.
Might want to consider sealing the plexiglass in some fashion as the gentle air current under it will collect dust on the side you can't so easily clean.
You can get a gauze fabric at like 60p/m. You could make a nice recessed frame to hold it and hide the edge. There's tables online of particle size so you can pick a mesh size.
Got some to use over windows and air vents. Works great and so cheap it's just replaced instead of cleaned. Airflow on the finer sizes would be interesting. Mines a spider guard.
I've long thought about a similar project to test my applications when scaling out and how well concurrency works.
One big advantage is that raspberry pies are also so you don't need to send 100MBs to your servers to max out the CPUs (and thus don't need such a quick connection and powerful machine to generate all those requests).
Might the HDD be attached to one Pi this way? It would be interesting if a ghetto SAN could be arrange. Do only the enterprise people get to HDD's with ethernet interfaces directly?
Do you know if the Pi2/3 alone (with only a standard smartphone USB charger) can power the WD PiDrive without a USB hub ? It seems like it could but I haven't found any confirmation yet (apart from so SO posts).
RPI's have been shown not to scale from a power/heat to $ ratio (I believe Mac Mini clusters are way more efficient), so this is not a practical project by any means.
Even so, very fun looking project. It says something when a geek like me is impressed at an electronics project for the (very nice) woodworking.
23 comments
[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 57.6 ms ] threadhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e6okZKRwnTQ
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This time round I got into carpentry for my project. Something that became both expensive and trickier than I had thought when I started. My carpentry knowledge is limited to (high-)school lessons, so take it easy on the results.
The project became more expensive than expected. Some 6000 SEK [~$740] including a whole bunch of tools (mill, jig saw, circular saw). Made do with 'Biltema' tools [the IKEA of tools] and returned the first mill after 1 hour of use. The other stopped after around 2 hours so then I fixed that one myself (took apart the start-button and modified it a bit).
The project consists of:
- 10/100 Mbps switch
- Nexus 7
- 10A 6 port USB charger
- 4 x Raspberry pi 3
- 4 x 8GB SD card
- TP cables + USB cables
- Oak
- Plexiglass
Anyway, you'd all probably rather see pictures than words.
- Nexus 7 with realtime data for all nodes.
- 'Economically' bought 8GB, not class 10, but thinking of running a 2.5" HDD for the controller node.
- Sleeved all the cables, then realised that they didn't fit with the sleeving. Could only strip them and do again.
- First test with 2 x USB hubs that didn't deliver enough current at start-up.
- Flip-up "chassis"
- My modified netdata page showing real-time data for all nodes, including the temperature.
- Running Docker with Kubernetes on the cluster.
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[Any errors/omissions are my own]
If you double the rpi number you will get close to used $300 laptop level of performance.
I'll be presenting on it at this year's php[tek], and will also post a few YouTube videos and blog posts about it separately.
Of course it's not as fast as my 5-year-old used Lenovo... But it's great for educational purposes (before anyone starts asking why you'd buy a bunch of Pis when one small laptop beats them performance-wise many times over).
Got some to use over windows and air vents. Works great and so cheap it's just replaced instead of cleaned. Airflow on the finer sizes would be interesting. Mines a spider guard.
One big advantage is that raspberry pies are also so you don't need to send 100MBs to your servers to max out the CPUs (and thus don't need such a quick connection and powerful machine to generate all those requests).
http://www.seagate.com/files/www-content/product-content/hdd...
http://wdlabs.wd.com/products/wd-pidrive-314gb/
Even so, very fun looking project. It says something when a geek like me is impressed at an electronics project for the (very nice) woodworking.