[Server-devel] XS/Book-server hardware reflexions

[Xavier Carcelle]

Dear XS folks,

to follow-up on the hardware threads, I have tried to sum-up some
reflexions about the hardware possible to build up the XS/book-server
@ our deployment in NosyKomba (Madagascar)

=Energy
The electricity is produced w/ solar panel (2 x 230W) producing a 24V-DC network
=> we need to supply the maximum of devices/appliances in 12V/24V-DC
to maximize the usage of the electricity
=>A 12v-DC network is preferred because most computers/network devices
power-supply are in the range 9-17V-DC (ATX power supply are producing
12V/5V/3V3/-12V from 110/220V-AC or 12v-DC)
=>APC solutions with monitoring of the battery load interacting with
the XS over Ethernet link could help to shutdown/halt properly the
linux kernel in case of power outages
==>I am looking at how can i stop smoothly the services while powered
by 12V-DC and some batteries/regulators ?

=School server (separated or merged XS and Book-server)

There is several propositions of hardware :

=>reliable (PC-like solutions)
*Advantech ARK-3440 (w/ tropicalized hard drives in RAID6) supplied in
24V-DC (usually 180W - ATX) (~= 1000€)
*MSI WindBox DE500-5123 (newegg.com) - 169€
*MSI 6676-001BUS (amazon.com) + 4gb DDR2-800 200pin notebook form
(CORSAIR 4GB (2 x 2GB) 200-Pin DDR2 800 at $45 and 2TB SATA hard drive
(Samsung) at $80
*fitPC2 : http://www.fit-pc.com/web/fit-pc/fit-pc2-specifications/ + ssd hdd
*fitPC3

=>low energy :
*Sheeva or dream "plug" supplied in 12/24V-DC (ARM-based CPU)
*flash/hard drives storage (ARM architecture) and connected in
Ethernet/Wi-Fi (usually 10W)

=>experimental : RasperriPi (less than 5W)

=>ARM based :
*XO 1.75 (? W) as a XS server with a usb-to-ethernet adapter for wired
connexion to the lan
*OpenWRT devices w/ external storage (foneras, wrt54g, ...)