I was with you right up until 8GB of RAM. Just like the netbook Atoms, Intel are probably crippling in an attempt to keep their other market going. Virtualisation support is almost pointless with such little system memory available (in the Windows world at least...)
Intel Centerton server-class Atoms: How low can you go?
In late 2012 Intel launched Centerton: the first in its new line of Atom-based server processors. Hoping to cut ARM's invasion of the data centre off at the pass, these low-power CPUs are targeted at an emerging "Metal as a Service" movement that sees a return of unique workloads to individual processors. I've finally gotten …
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Tuesday 14th May 2013 10:48 GMT Trevor_Pott
Agreed
But for tossing a few Linux VMs that just wake up, respond to something and go back to sleep it's not a bad little box. It's a lot less of a pain than trying to build some Raspberry-pi-alike box for each function then lashing the lot of them to a pole. Standard software, standard management tools, etc.
It's "good enough" for a lot of things that might have driven me to ARM. Which, really, is the only reason the thing exists in the first place, so it's doing it's job, I suppose...
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Wednesday 15th May 2013 08:43 GMT Lusty
Re: Agreed
Oh I completely agree that the hardware is useful and good, my post was more a dig at Intel for being nobbers than a problem with the power of it. If they allowed even 32GB of memory (like most PC motherboards now do) then it would easily replace a lot of SMB kit and reduce power consumption as I would imagine this could run a few useful Windows VMs given sufficient memory.
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Thursday 16th May 2013 00:53 GMT Crazy Operations Guy
8 GB is enoguh for a few WIn 7 machines
I run my VDI instances on Server 2012 and give Windows 7 512 MB and allow to expand to 2 GB. I end up running about a dozen or so VMs on a Xeon E5 with 32 GB of RAM and haven't heard any complaints from the office drones that use them.
Hyper-V server 2012 will happily run with only 768 MB of RAM, and will usually only take about 300 MBs when lightly used.
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Tuesday 14th May 2013 12:51 GMT itzman
Re: Have I missed the part
thought it was 7-8W stated somewhere..
I have a fanless atom MB in a case with two big disks ruining as the 'house file server and dns server and backup repository for various websites and machines'
It is gruntless when used as a web server doing big calculations - resizing images in real time out of the database was a nono, so I moved that to a virtual server on the core internet. But for GP data string and 'little' jobs like DNS it's pure magic.
I think you have to say this is a tool with a niche application. where you want complete hardware control for light duty, and a single server with no VMs is enough, this sort of box is really excellent.
If you have low average but high peak CPU needs, a rented VM on a fast machine is better.
But this sort of box makes an ideal SOHO/SME server. rather than outsourcing to a cloud, bring it all in house in the certain knowledge that with e.g. Debian loaded up,. its gonna be rock solid for years at a time. And no one else can get their hands on your data...
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Tuesday 14th May 2013 12:27 GMT Matt Bryant
Single unit power? Think bigger....
Instead of checking the efficiency of a single unit, imagine them in trays or blades, plugging into a chassis with redundant and intelligent PSUs, where the larger PSUs will be much more effective than a dozen or so single PSUs, and then they will be a whole lot more power efficient.
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Tuesday 14th May 2013 13:00 GMT itzman
Re: Single unit power? Think bigger....
I am not sure that logic stacks up. The grunt per watt is not as good as a more gutsy board, and so rather than e.g. 10 of these, virtualise ten units on a better CPU. Then you CAN manage a raid disk and all the goodies, and if they are high peak to mean services, you won't be any less power hungry and you will have a lot of grunt available to cover any individual peaks.
I see this as the hardware where you want complete control, and you want it locally, not in someone else's datacentre.
So typically file, DNS and mail server with mirrored disks on overnight rsync and maybe a corporate internal web server serving up to 100 staff or so. And a platform, to host a small corporate (mysql?)database.
I.e. FILE/LAMP/DNS/DHCP/EMAIL for SOHO/SME.
And possibly remotely managed by a company who can access it via SSH over the internet
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Tuesday 14th May 2013 13:55 GMT fishyuk
HP Moonshot 45 x Centerton in 5U (4.3U with 5U spacer)
HP Moonshot already has 45 x Centertons in the first available configuration for exactly the reasons and requirements you have covered. Additional cartridges are to be launched but indications have been given on future configurations including quad node so not hard to look at potential counts per unit depending on workload and cartridge used. And all the benefits of iLO and HP CMU.
Good to see an article concentrate on real world usage scenarios rather than obsessive per CPU theoretical benchmarks which tend only to be applicable to HPC and the like.
http://h18004.www1.hp.com/products/quickspecs/14527_div/14527_div.HTML
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Tuesday 14th May 2013 14:15 GMT jabuzz
Only two usb sockets
Title says it all, only has two USB3.0 sockets, and there is nothing internal. Why is that important you might ask, well I have /boot on a small USB flash drive so that when I do my Linux software RAID I can put /boot on the flash drive and just do it whole disk and not mess about with partitions. The closest thing to a perfect home server board otherwise, well more SATA ports would be nice.
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Tuesday 14th May 2013 14:44 GMT IGnatius T Foobar
Linux and ARM for the win
As desktop computers continue to disappear from the home in favor of wireless laptops and tablets, there is an increasing need for that one little machine sitting in the background as a file server, media server, etc.
Mine still sits in a rack, but that rack is a relic of a bygone era, when geeks like us had "one of everything" in the basement because there were a zillion different operating systems and no virtualization. In my next home I may just get one of these little servers and bolt it to the wall.
Windows is totally unnecessary for this (and every) task. Linux gets the job done, happily plodding along doing what it's asked, and then idling back down. That being the case, why bother with a "low and slow" Intel Atom when an equivalent ARM runs with lower power, faster speed, and runs the exact same Linux?
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Tuesday 14th May 2013 16:14 GMT Charlie Clark
Like for like comparison required
As you note the performance isn't stellar - room in the market for both AMD and nVidia. You really need to draw up some application configurations and load tests for when ARM hardware becomes available to test. The Raspberry Pi comparison is irrelevant as it most certainly isn't supposed to be a server, personal media server is a misnomer in that context.
TPM has been touting some very datacentre-friendly, high-density ARM-based designs which will presumably do CPU-bound virtualisation at less than R-Pi power per virtual server. Can't remember whether they have GPUs for parallel grunt, if not there will soon be Teslas for the job. You can imagine Google licking its lips at being able to use them for transcoding for Youtube.
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Tuesday 14th May 2013 23:30 GMT Wilco 1
Re: Like for like comparison required
A9-based Calxeda server chips have been available for a while. But for a rough comparison with modern ARM cores, Tegra 4 scores 4582 on Octane, so a Cortex-A15 is quite a bit faster than Centerton on single-threaded code. At 8.5W the current Centerton has no chance of winning the power efficiency battle.