Re: What ARM hardware should we buy and where should we host it?

[Vagrant Cascadian <vagrant@debian.org>]

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On 2018-09-03, Ricardo Wurmus wrote:
> The first question is what ARM hardware to buy; the second is where to
> host that hardware.  Here are some considerations:
>
> - The new systems should be easy to host in a data centre; this might
>   mean that we need rack-mounted servers, or that we need a co-location
>   data centre that accepts machines with unusual form factors.
>
> - The system should be able to build substitutes for both armhf and
>   aarch64.  Not all aarch64 CPUs support building for armhf, for
>   example.
>
> - We need to be able to restart the machine remotely.  If members of the
>   Guix project have no physical access to the hosting site, this can be
>   done via remote-controlled power supply or similar.

Debian also has similar needs for build machines and is currently
exploring new hardware. There was a pretty good summary a few months
back:

  https://lists.debian.org/debian-arm/2018/06/msg00062.html


One of the most promising seems to be the SynQuacer:

  https://www.96boards.org/product/developerbox/

With a 24-core processor, SATA, PCIe, USB 3.0, micro-atx form-factor,
and 4 ram slots (up to 64GB, in theory, but may be picky about
ram).

Sounds like they're working with Debian's 4.17.x kernels, so should have
reasonable mainline linux support.

Steve McIntyre (CCed) has been rebuilding debian with them to test them
out, and my impression is it's been going pretty well. Might be more
details in the Debian ARM ports BoF video:

  https://debconf18.debconf.org/talks/93-arm-ports-bof/


> One system that looks promising for co-location is the Softiron
> Overdrive 3000 (a rack-mounted ARM server.)  A system suitable for
> hosting at home is the Softiron Overdrive 1000.

It does sound like the processors used in the Overdrive systems are
officially EOL, but maybe there are still enough of them that SoftIron
will continue to support them for a while. I'll see if I can follow-up
on that, too.


live well,
  vagrant

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