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Online.net Tests Dedicated ARM Server Cloud

DomainBop

DomainBop

Dormant VPSB Pathogen
Something different, so it's worth a thread.  Online.net is testing a dedicated ARM server cloud.  You can get a free 15-minute trial here: http://labs.online.net/#/ (no signup required) or a longer free trial by following @online_fr on Twitter and sending them a DM with your email.

What makes Online labs cloud different ?
In our cloud, servers are dedicated. You have dedicated, constant and predictible performances you can rely on. We are not speaking about dedicated hosting, it comes with all the benefits of the cloud!

Our platform provides:

  • On-demand physical computing servers. Read more
  • Images to create series of servers with predefined configuration. For instance, you can prepare to scale your serving capacity with a frontend image for an Apache server. Read more
  • Extra storage volumes for your data, SSD, HDD or both.
  • Snapshot to backup your servers and their data. Read more
  • Reserved IP addresses movable between your servers for live migration. Read more
  • Object storage to upload all your files. Read more
You can launch as many physical servers (and not VMs) as you need in seconds, configure networking and manage storage.
Click to expand...

Documentation is here: https://doc.cloud.online.net/

@c1-10-1-20-226:~$ cat /proc/cpuinfo
Processor    : Marvell PJ4Bv7 Processor rev 2 (v7l)
processor    : 0
BogoMIPS    : 1332.01

processor    : 1
BogoMIPS    : 1332.01

processor    : 2
BogoMIPS    : 1332.01

processor    : 3
BogoMIPS    : 1332.01

Features    : swp half thumb fastmult vfp edsp vfpv3 tls
CPU implementer    : 0x56
CPU architecture: 7
CPU variant    : 0x2
CPU part    : 0x584
CPU revision    : 2

Hardware    : Marvell Armada XP Development Board
Revision    : 0000
Serial        : 0000000000000000

@c1-10-1-20-226:~$ uname -a
Linux c1-10-1-20-226 3.2.34 #34 SMP Fri Jun 20 16:38:11 CEST 2014 armv7l armv7l armv7l GNU/Linux

@c1-10-1-20-226:~$ free -m
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:          2024        202       1821          0          8        110
-/+ buffers/cache:         83       1941
Swap:            0          0          0
Click to expand...
 
drmike

drmike

100% Tier-1 Gogent
Quad Core 1.6Ghz Marvell... Interesting

Drobo storage units use this CPU or have in 2013~.

So have Synology devices...

Wondering what brand gear they are using for this??? I'd expect a real enterprise solution vs. cobbled gear.... 

I've been waiting for these ARM offerings :)   I welcome them.
 
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drmike

drmike

100% Tier-1 Gogent
sv01 said:
this video really interesing http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFhgSKNJP2s

they build their own board? or these just part of marketing kit.
Click to expand...
Sounds like hype... in there saying their own factory.... I am ahh doubting that....

Counted one of the modules on one of the boards.  Looks like 18 processor boards per line card...  72 processor total per....

I count 16 of cards in the chasis at end of video.

16 x 72 = 1152 processor boards in chasis.

1152 processor boards x quad core = 4608 cores per chasis.

Why use such as end customer?  Meh, depends really.  They should be able to in theory offer these at pretty low cost and with more cores and features.  These must have super fast interconnects in 10's of Gbps per second on backplanes.  So could have very interesting, redundant storage.

Certainly to them is lower power costs per billable units relative to CPU, general processing.

Slap a true Cloud up front on this and could be pretty magical.   If throwing run of mill VPS approach then yeah, nothing to see here.
 
DomainBop

DomainBop

Dormant VPSB Pathogen
Close to 1000 physical ARM servers racked so far.  This beta was launched today...


from twitter: "912 serveurs physiques (3648 cores)   48 switchs   288 HDD/SSD dans une baie"

Slap a true Cloud up front on this and could be pretty magical.   If throwing run of mill VPS approach then yeah, nothing to see here.
Click to expand...

From the looks of the documentation this will be a true cloud and also have an API.

For me, the number of "run of the mill" VPS's I'm using has decreased dramatically this year.  The number of VPS/cloud providers I'm using who use SolusVM is under 20% now and OpenVZ is under 10%.

I think the main reason people would opt for these (other than the "cloud" features) is "You have dedicated, constant and predictible performances you can rely on."  That's a big selling point, especially in the low low end of the VPS/cloud sector because the overselling overloading (of RAM, I/O, CPU) practiced by many low end providers makes their VPS's that are hosted on Intel E3's and E5's perform worse than the cheap 5-10 euro Atom/Nano/ARM dedicateds that the French providers offer.
 
pcan

pcan

New Member
This platform seems to have a few useful enterprise features, such as snapshots. Each storage module (SAN) is connected to the network controller trough 4 gigabit connections; each server has a gigabit connection port. Basic performance tests are good, this ARM CPU is a lot better than the Raspberry PI. The custom control panel is nice.

The service seems to be ok. Now price is the key factor. The beta should last 2 weeks, then we will see how this cloud service will fit in the market.
 
drmike

drmike

100% Tier-1 Gogent
Ratios as reported seem a tad wonky.

912 serveurs physiques (3648 cores)   48 switchs   288 HDD/SSD dans une baie"

3648 cores / 4 = 912 real CPU boards. = right.   Less density than I counted up.

912 units to sell to customers in dedicated-like model.

Problem is you have 912 sharing 288 drives.  Of those 288 not all are spinning.  They are almost certainly SSD caching in the middle.

912 units / 260? spinning drives = 3.5+ units sharing a single drive.

912 units / 48 switches = 19 ports per switch.  Odds of them having anything but 24 port switches, slim.

Now plausible they have larger density on ports Gbit and bonding, but seems wild/goofy.

912 units x  4 ports = 3648 ports...

3648 ports / 48 switches = 76 ports per switch... NOPE

2 port per board = 1824 port  / 48 switchs = 38 ports per switch....  10 shy of a 48 port....

Meh 24 ports with 5 spares being bonded and or uplinks.

Not doubting it will / can work... But falls short of the dedicated model with the off board storage that may go wrong at any time and common areas you don't experience in a dedicated solution.  

Empty performance = great likely.   Get this populated and all bets are off.

Really wondering how darn cheap they got these boards/chasis down to - to make it viable/competitive.
 
Wintereise

Wintereise

New Member
>> 3648 ports / 48 switches = 76 ports per switch... NOPE

 

Why not? That's nothing, stacking will literally let you have hundreds of ports on a single switch.
 
DomainBop

DomainBop

Dormant VPSB Pathogen
Problem is you have 912 sharing 288 drives.  Of those 288 not all are spinning.  They are almost certainly SSD caching in the middle.
Click to expand...
They use a mix of SSD and HDD depending on the volume type.

 
What kind of volumes do you offer?
We have two categories of volumes:

  • Local Volumes. Each server has a local pool of drives available for it's volume. This pool is connected to the server using PCB tracks ensuring minimal latency and no network congestion. There is no redundancy on these volumes. By default, your local volumes are saved to a permanent storage when you stop your server. We have two kinds of local volumes:
    LSSD (Local Solid State Drive) which are able to deliver a lot of IOPS and are perfect for random read/write patterns. The maximum size of LSSD volumes is 115GB.
  • LHDD (Local Hard Disk Drive) for sequential read/write patterns and higher capacity volumes. The maximum size of LHDD volumes is 486GB.
[*]Distributed Volumes. These volumes are replicated three times and will protect you against data loss. There is only one kind of distributed volumes:
  • DHDD (Distributed Hard Disk Drive) for volumes up to 2TB.
Click to expand...
 
drmike

drmike

100% Tier-1 Gogent
Wintereise said:
>> 3648 ports / 48 switches = 76 ports per switch... NOPE

 

Why not? That's nothing, stacking will literally let you have hundreds of ports on a single switch.
Click to expand...
That was simple division.  I can't see them running 96 port switches with spare 20 ports....  They are available and all, but probably not.  Switching costs would really add up versus 24's which are rather cheap.

DomainBop said:
They use a mix of SSD and HDD depending on the volume type.

 
Click to expand...
Interesting mix / model.   @DomainBop to my ADD rescue with the info.   I appreciate you immensely!

Looks like the gotcha for many, ahhh me, is the distro support today:

"We provide the latest Ubuntu LTS (14.04) and a stable Gentoo. Any Linux distribution with support of armhf should work without problems. Other distributions are on their way."
 
M

mikmak

New Member
Wintereise said:
>> 3648 ports / 48 switches = 76 ports per switch... NOPE

 

Why not? That's nothing, stacking will literally let you have hundreds of ports on a single switch.
Click to expand...
actually, each blade has its own switch (it's just the "switch chip" not a whole 1U rack switch as you can be used to see) ,

each server has multiple 1gb/s connections to the onboard switch and each blade switches are stacked together on a x*10gb/s ring in the chassis.

I can provide invites on request if you want to try out (I need your firstname/lastname/email in PM)
 
ZweiTiger

ZweiTiger

New Member
Interesting.. :)

Is this a bit similar then iwstack? Or this is another category?

I hope their cloud prices could be low a bit.. :)
 
N

NeyerWeb

New Member
These servers are actually pretty good considering the hardware, online.net just need to release some pricing although being free is always good. For now at least.
 
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