[Leaplist] Power mitigation, diskless v. truly thin, virtualization and/or remote -- WAS: Scanner Setup Help?

Fri Jul 24 09:53:10 EDT 2009

A major version of "diskless" is that you spend real money getting a nice,
highly redundant file server, and the client machines benefit from the
redundancy built into the file server - ie, they don't need expensive RAID
cards or anything similar. Of course, doing this for a desktop system
probably isn't a good idea... 100MBit ethernet will only get you 10-12
MBytes/sec, whereas a local hard drive will get you a 10X performance
increase.

Personally, I utilize a master RAID server with real redundancy hardware
(poweredge 1650 with 3 1TB SATA drives connected to a RAID-1 with 256M
battery-backed RAM, as well as 768M ECC registered RAM, lights-out
management, etc... all for ~$715) ($150 server, $75 lights-out management
module, $80/drive, $250 RAID card). One drive is configured as a "hot
spare", meaning it will automatically reconstruct the array in the event
of a failure (buying me some time to fix it before another drive fails,
which DOES and HAS happened (killed my last array)). Note that as of
today, you can get 1.5 TB drives for $90 each.

To this, I connect my mythtv backend, which boots off of NFS to take
advantage of the redundancy... and then tosses it out the window by using
a software RAID-0 for the recordings across 3 1TB hard drives (so the
system is fault-tolerant, but the recordings are highly susceptible).

Unfortunately, my experience thus far has been that linux only barely
supports diskless systems, and frequently breaks that support for lengthy
periods of time with kernel updates and baselayout updates. For example, a
recent kernel update removed TCP packet support from NFS... which causes
problems on my switch (admittedly, not a linux problem, but a switch
problem... but using TCP packets fixed it).

Personally, for low-power systems (of which I have three), I use solid
state over CF cards with a Via architecture (usually C7 CPUs). These have
high temperature tolerances and very low power consumption... they've been
running in my garage without A/C or ventilation for 1.5 months thus far.
Basically, these are simple data processing machines (email, web server,
proxy (purely in RAM, not in flash), bind9 server, etc) that don't need
tremendous amounts of storage... or if they do, they can tie in over NFS
to my file server.

On Wed, July 22, 2009 11:33 pm, Bryan J. Smith wrote:
>
> Kevin Korb wrote:
>> I think it is better to centralize storage and then make
>> desktops diskless whenever possible.  Cuts down on the noise,
>> heat, and power consumption.
>
> Diskless or truly thin (remote execution)?
>
> Also remember that a typical 2.5" drive only uses 2-2.5W of power,
> far, far less than even a typical, low-end chipset, let alone the
> 12-20W of a typical 3.5" drive.  Even 10-15,000rpm 2.5" drives use
> less power than commodity 3.5" 7200rpm and even "green" 5400-7200
> variable 3.5" drives.
>
> The cost savings is really in the TCO more than power.  I've been
> through this ROI game with numerous fiscal and retail customers
> over the last half-decade.  Typical PC TCO is $500 just on the
> servicing, which makes diskless and, even more so, thin clients
> a major sell.  The power difference is less than 1/10th that.
>
> In all honesty, running with ARM instead x86 (instead of Atom as
> well) is far, far more of a cost saver.  There are several new
> NAS appliances hitting the market now that are a low-power ARM
> with dual-2.5" (not 3.5") bays.  Small in size, and they run on
> 12V @ 2A, typically sub-20W total.
>
> Jason Boxman wrote:
>> It's all on the server(s).  The workstation is just RAID 1.
>> I like to keep virtual machine storage local to my workstation.
>
> People confuse virtualization and remote desktop.  No one advocates
> virtualization over a remote mount.  However, virtualization providing
> a remote desktop is a whole different story.  ;)
>
> Red Hat bought the upstream maintainer of KVM for more than just KVM.
> Although control of a major upstream componen tlike KVM is trademark
> Red Hat, especially when the vendor is dabbling with proprietary
> software (and Red Hat wants to bring a quick and complete end to that).
>
>
> --
> Bryan J Smith          Professional, Technical Annoyance
> b.j.smith at ieee.org    http://www.linkedin.com/in/bjsmith
> --------------------------------------------------------
> I don't have a "favorite Linux distro."  I use, develop
> and support community efforts, often built around Linux.
> Technology and solutions are my focus, not dragging in
> assumptions, marketing and other concepts which dominate
> non-community developed software, which I left long ago.
>
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