Can I get recommendations for a micro-server?

linuxha

Active Member
I'm looking for 2 different small servers that will handle specific network servers (DHCP, DNS, syslog, etc). I want a low power server with SATA (need to handle the syslog for lots of other devices). And I'd like a another server (like a Pi) that has emmc and a somewhat more robust power interface than the micro-mini-usb (whatever) power interface. Another requirement is that I don't want to use Ubuntu. Any other distro that is not Ubuntu (Debian is okay). As long as it keeps things reasonably updated.
 
I have various Raspberry Pi boards and I do like them but the fact that you can breath funny on them and the reboot (power).
 
I'm hoping Pete can point me to some of his older posts. My searches didn't find what I wanted.
 
Currently here been using the Pine64 2Gb computer as a dedicated Ubuntu 18.04 64 bit automation server.
 
It's been a few years now and I have not had any hardware issues with it running 24/7. 
 
These days you can run just about any Linux OS on the device. 
 
Been watching the folks over there build a deluxe version of the Pine 64 called the Rock Pro 64 which is also arm based.
 
Personally (now over a year of requests) have not updated to new hardware from the company as I want to have an RTC with backup battery.
 
For whatever design reason they removed it the charging circuit on all of their new boards.  NOW seeing that it is a couple of months away.  BUT they have mentioned that a few times in the last two years.
 
Here is a picture.  Many bells and whistles.  This is larger than an RPi but smaller than a bread box. 
 
 
Rock64Pro.jpg
 
 
The SoC "battle" between Intel and ARM has always been and seems to be intensifying this past year (2018).
 
It's not soup yet for this year 2018...but might be next year?
 
 
 
While I've not yet used one, I've read the odroid series are interesting.  

The Odroid-HC2 has a SATA drive connector built right onto it.

(corrected)
 
I have the C2, I thought it had the SATA, but it doesn't. I think it may have the emmc interface but I need to check.  I do have some issues with the distro (Ubuntu). I will try to look at Armbian.
 
Your link does have the HC2, that has the SATA interface. I'll keep that in mind.
 
pete_c said:
Currently here been using the Pine64 2Gb computer as a dedicated Ubuntu 18.04 64 bit automation server.
 
 
...
 
Here is a picture.  Many bells and whistles.  This is larger than an RPi but smaller than a bread box. 
 
Rock64Pro.jpg
 
The SoC "battle" between Intel and ARM has always been and seems to be intensifying this past year (2018).
 
It's not soup yet for this year 2018...but might be next year?
 
Thanks Pete, I was hoping you might respond. Thanks
 
How is it powered? Via the USB connector or another method? The C2 has a ultra-micro-mini barrel connector (dang that thing is tiny). I'm looking at the other Pine boards (and Odroid) to see what fits my needs best.
 
BTW, most of the applications I'll be using are normal installable packages but I will be getting a dev env. setup. I do have some issues with the Ubuntu distro. I will try to look at Armbian. 
 
When you start adding things like SATA you likely start exceeding USB power options (save for newer USB-C)
 
Via the USB connector or another method?
 
It is using a standard size barrel connector and 12VDC.
 
Gb interface / USB 3.0  / miniPCie X4 inteface. 
 
wkearney99 said:
When you start adding things like SATA you likely start exceeding USB power options (save for newer USB-C)
 
Unfortunately I have a computer that needs to write lots of logs. For that it's SATA. For the rest I want to give emmc a try to see how reliable it is. 
 
pete_c said:
Via the USB connector or another method?
 
It is using a standard size barrel connector and 12VDC.
 
Gb interface / USB 3.0  / miniPCie X4 inteface. 
 
That would suggest not being choked by the older USB bus. That is a plus.
 
pete_c said:
Via the USB connector or another method?
 
It is using a standard size barrel connector and 12VDC.
 
Gb interface / USB 3.0  / miniPCie X4 inteface. 
 
I went with the ROCKPro64, hard to argue with the miniPCIe to SATA. I think this will be the best solution for Server.
 
Now I can sit back and relax and look over the solutions for the boards with the emmc.
 
Pete, where do you find the Linux Images? Never mind

Found it on the wiki pages (via the forums)
 
A while back didn't see any updates updates posted for Ubuntu 18.04 64 bit so I took a chance here and did a live upgrade from Ubuntu 16.04 to Ubuntu 18.04. 
 
Pine64:~# uname -a
Linux ICS-Pine64 3.10.105-bsp-1.2-ayufan-77 #1 SMP PREEMPT Sun Jul 9 12:09:30 UTC 2017 aarch64 aarch64 aarch64 GNU/Linux

Pine64:~# lsb_release -a
LSB Version:    core-9.20170808ubuntu1-noarch:security-9.20170808ubuntu1-noarch
Distributor ID:    Ubuntu
Description:    Ubuntu 18.04.1 LTS
Release:    18.04
Codename:    bionic
 
 
I have various Raspberry Pi boards and I do like them but the fact that you can breath funny on them and the reboot (power).
 
Just sent in 1 Sandisk and 1 Samsung micro SD card for replacement.  This is the 3rd Samsung micro SD card that I have sent back over the last two years. 
 
These were running OS's on the RPi and Pine64.  Same issues now with all of these being that they lock to read access only.  They become unusable with read access only.
 
Using eMMC will be a nice change. 
 
My touchscreens which are close to 8 years old now still boot fine (starting to get slow) via eMMC of old (1 - 2 Gb embedded old Linux).  Omnitouch screens here are also using eMMC and see scrambles twice now in last 3 years.

My low powered 8 drive NAS (over 5 years old) running BSD is mostly running OS in RAM and doing well these days. (same as PFSense).

Xigma
Version 11.2.0.4 - Omnius (revision 5975)
Compiled Fri Sep 07 17:25:25 CDT 2018
Platform OS FreeBSD 11.2-RELEASE-p2 #0 r338485M: Thu Sep 6 00:24:41 CEST 2018
Platform x64-embedded on AMD E-350 Processor
 
So the RockPro has arrived, I'm waiting on the SATA drive but that should arrive soon. I went with Debian Stretch. I've booted from the SD card and immediately redirected the rsyslog to another server. That should minimize SD writes. Not a lot of services running (good). I've started adding applications (screen, emacs, dnsmasq, etc). The only surprise was that the 1GHz Athlon has 2000 bogomips and the RockPro has 48 bogomips (times 6). I'll be honest I'm not sure that really matters for most of the services I'm running. I'll need to think about adding the Shinoba, DB, MQTT and/or Node-Red services but the rest like the cronjobs, web server, dns, dhcp, etc. should be fine.
 
Ignore the bogomips, I have an Odroid C2 that lists 3394 bogomips (arm7 v7l), the RockPro has a no listing of the CPU (we know it's an ARM). So I have to assume something is missing in the /proc/cpuinfo section.
 
Okay. I've had the RockPro64 up and running for a while now. I figured out how to get the SD boot to mount the SATA drive as root. I'm now working on moving all the appropriate configs over. So far so good.
 
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