5 ms·

I get the idea of doing this for fun, or as a means of testing tools for setting up kubernetes clusters, but then the author says > This could then be used as

by sciurus 10y ago

I get the idea of doing this for fun, or as a means of testing tools for setting up kubernetes clusters, but then the author says > This could then be used as the ultimate continuous delivery appliance. and I'm scratching my head about why you'd want to run important infrastructure on a bunch of underpowered, probably unreliably, stick PCs.

swsieber 10y ago
In theory, the unreliable bit wouldn't matter so much because you have enough managed by kubernetes...
moondev 10y ago
Author here. The plan is to get spinnaker setup on the cluster. It's a collection of around 8 microservices. Kubernetes should handle HA just fine. 20 cores and 10GB of memory for the cluster. I can build another one of these and put it in a separate room for multi-region ;)
- puzzle 10y ago
  Where's error correction? Good luck trusting whatever binary and artifacts you build.
- sciurus 10y ago
  You plugged all 5 stick pcs into a single usb hub and ethernet switch. Your definition of HA must be very different from mine.
  - moondev 10y ago
    You're right. I should go get redundant power supplies and a full rack for my little hobby cluster.
    - ceocoder 10y ago
      Don't think that is enough, check if your next door neighbor is willing to plug one of these in their coat closet - that gives you multi zone. Then ship one to me (or I can build one myself) and host it in San Francisco, that gives us multi region. Are you game?
      - moondev 10y ago
        Sure! Lets put one on a balloon with a battery pack and hotspot too. That is true cloud computing right there
    - sciurus 10y ago
      Sorry, It looks like I took you too literally when you said > This could then be used as the ultimate continuous delivery appliance. I interpreted this enthusiasm as meaning it was the sort of setup you would recommend to your clients. Now it sounds more like you meant it as a joke.
rasz_pl 10y ago
dont forget >For $340 I now had a cluster,20 x86 cores,10GB memory,160GB storage which is more $ than faster ordinary desktop pc
- moondev 10y ago
  A single computer is not a cluster. It also needs more power, has a larger footprint, louder etc
hinkley 10y ago
I was working a contract at a large, old company. They had allocated hardware budget at the beginning of the year, but since we were brought in in late fall, and because the owner of the contracting firm was all sizzle and no sausage regarding Continuous Delivery, we only had enough hardware allocated for two stages of a CD pipelIne. One of my fellow contractors asked for a laptop and his iMac was sitting there, so I pounced on it and eventually set up a set of docker images containing a couple of Jenkins slaves, headless selenium with Chrome and Firefox, and a couple of nginx reverse proxies. If I had stayed on longer with the project I might have reconfigured the hardware we did have to run more of the backend code. It has been really sad how often I've worked at places where some of our best engineering effort was spent on dealing with hardware shortages. Especially since they will inevitably hire another developer or two to make up for all the lost productivity that could have been fixed with $10K a year in hardware budget. It doesn't surprise me in the least to see someone spending time figuring out how to run a kubernetes cluster on cheap hardware.
- JoeAltmaier 10y ago
  I was working to create a FibreChannel router. It had EEPROMs to boot from. We were a remote site; got our hardware from the main office which had a large lab. They quit sending us blank (erased) EEPROMs. We quickly ran out. I called, asked "Why did the EEPROMs stop arriving?" Answer: we had to return some before they would send any more (we had a dozen used ones on hand). They were delaying a project that cost $100K per day, because somebody in the lab was annoyed at buying so many $50 EEPROMs.
  - seanp2k2 10y ago
    Yep, in any business scenario where people are being paid any kind of reasonable salary, the cost of labor far outstrips the cost of hardware and makes replacing this project with a $2k server from Dell or some AWS instances / droplets a "no-brainer". Consider support and maintainability as well.
    - slim 10y ago
      Unless you live in developing world. In which case labor is typically cheaper than hardware

by sciurus 10y ago

swsieber 10y ago

In theory, the unreliable bit wouldn't matter so much because you have enough managed by kubernetes...

moondev 10y ago

Author here. The plan is to get spinnaker setup on the cluster. It's a collection of around 8 microservices. Kubernetes should handle HA just fine. 20 cores and 10GB of memory for the cluster. I can build another one of these and put it in a separate room for multi-region ;)

puzzle 10y ago
Where's error correction? Good luck trusting whatever binary and artifacts you build.
sciurus 10y ago
You plugged all 5 stick pcs into a single usb hub and ethernet switch. Your definition of HA must be very different from mine.
- moondev 10y ago
  You're right. I should go get redundant power supplies and a full rack for my little hobby cluster.
  - ceocoder 10y ago
    Don't think that is enough, check if your next door neighbor is willing to plug one of these in their coat closet - that gives you multi zone. Then ship one to me (or I can build one myself) and host it in San Francisco, that gives us multi region. Are you game?
    - moondev 10y ago
      Sure! Lets put one on a balloon with a battery pack and hotspot too. That is true cloud computing right there
  - sciurus 10y ago
    Sorry, It looks like I took you too literally when you said > This could then be used as the ultimate continuous delivery appliance. I interpreted this enthusiasm as meaning it was the sort of setup you would recommend to your clients. Now it sounds more like you meant it as a joke.

rasz_pl 10y ago

dont forget >For $340 I now had a cluster,20 x86 cores,10GB memory,160GB storage which is more $ than faster ordinary desktop pc

moondev 10y ago
A single computer is not a cluster. It also needs more power, has a larger footprint, louder etc

hinkley 10y ago

I was working a contract at a large, old company. They had allocated hardware budget at the beginning of the year, but since we were brought in in late fall, and because the owner of the contracting firm was all sizzle and no sausage regarding Continuous Delivery, we only had enough hardware allocated for two stages of a CD pipelIne. One of my fellow contractors asked for a laptop and his iMac was sitting there, so I pounced on it and eventually set up a set of docker images containing a couple of Jenkins slaves, headless selenium with Chrome and Firefox, and a couple of nginx reverse proxies. If I had stayed on longer with the project I might have reconfigured the hardware we did have to run more of the backend code. It has been really sad how often I've worked at places where some of our best engineering effort was spent on dealing with hardware shortages. Especially since they will inevitably hire another developer or two to make up for all the lost productivity that could have been fixed with $10K a year in hardware budget. It doesn't surprise me in the least to see someone spending time figuring out how to run a kubernetes cluster on cheap hardware.

JoeAltmaier 10y ago
I was working to create a FibreChannel router. It had EEPROMs to boot from. We were a remote site; got our hardware from the main office which had a large lab. They quit sending us blank (erased) EEPROMs. We quickly ran out. I called, asked "Why did the EEPROMs stop arriving?" Answer: we had to return some before they would send any more (we had a dozen used ones on hand). They were delaying a project that cost $100K per day, because somebody in the lab was annoyed at buying so many $50 EEPROMs.
- seanp2k2 10y ago
  Yep, in any business scenario where people are being paid any kind of reasonable salary, the cost of labor far outstrips the cost of hardware and makes replacing this project with a $2k server from Dell or some AWS instances / droplets a "no-brainer". Consider support and maintainability as well.
  - slim 10y ago
    Unless you live in developing world. In which case labor is typically cheaper than hardware