N4IRS Posted September 25, 2017 Posted September 25, 2017 I am considering building a development machine for building images, and Debian packages (deb). I do not plan a GUI on it. I plan to ssh in. I would like to be able to mirror a couple of SATA drives for safety. Speed and connectivity are important. Can anyone make a suggestion on what board. Must run Armbian of course. Thanks, Steve
tkaiser Posted September 25, 2017 Posted September 25, 2017 50 minutes ago, N4IRS said: Must run Armbian of course. Since Armbian only runs on ARM devices while it can only be built on x64 that requirement is impossible https://docs.armbian.com/Developer-Guide_Build-Preparation/#what-do-i-need Many cores/threads help with compilation, fast storage [1] helps with everything else and the more DRAM you have the more you benefit from your host's filesystem buffers (IO not hitting the SSD) [1] both bandwidth and especially latency/IOPS, forget about HDDs here and always use fast SSDs
N4IRS Posted September 25, 2017 Author Posted September 25, 2017 Sorry if I was unclear. X64 I have no problem. I want a ARM based machine. I am looking for a recommendation for a ARM based board to use for development.
tkaiser Posted September 25, 2017 Posted September 25, 2017 I fear I still don't understand your goal (the 'building images' part since if it's about 'Armbian images' then only possible platform is x64). Anyway: if it's about compiling stuff highly parallel then these ressources might be useful: http://wiki.ant-computing.com/Choosing_a_processor_for_a_build_farm#Analysis_on_2016.2F02.2F07
N4IRS Posted September 26, 2017 Author Posted September 26, 2017 OK, Forget the building images. I am interested in building a ARM based development machine for compiling and testing programs for the ARM processor. I do not want to cross compile. I do not plan to run the machine headless. I will not be connecting a keyboard mouse or screen. For storage, I would like to use RAID 1 (mirror) I would like a fast SATA interface that can support at least 2 SATA fast SSD. I would like it to run Armbian Any suggestions? Thanks, Steve
TonyMac32 Posted September 26, 2017 Posted September 26, 2017 The RAID is a tough point, I will ignore it for now. The highest core count device Armbian officially supports in the Odroid XU4. There are headless server variants of it with USB3 -> SATA in a nice case available (HC1). Now, it is an HMP processor with 4 big and 4 small cores, I can't say for sure how compilation will look like, I use one for a media server and software transcoding. (Only a stream at a time, nothing insane).
N4IRS Posted September 26, 2017 Author Posted September 26, 2017 Tony, Thanks for the comments. I was looking at the Odroid UX4. You confirmed it. I'm going to skip the directly attached RAID and use Network Attached Storage. Thanks again, Steve
tkaiser Posted September 26, 2017 Posted September 26, 2017 1 hour ago, TonyMac32 said: There are headless server variants of it with USB3 -> SATA in a nice case available (HC1) Having both I would always prefer the HC1 over XU4 for heat dissipation reasons alone. And I would combine the HC1 with a fast SSD for such workloads. 1 hour ago, TonyMac32 said: Now, it is an HMP processor with 4 big and 4 small cores, I can't say for sure how compilation will look like One of the two guys behind my link above shares some insights: https://www.cnx-software.com/2017/08/10/hardkernel-to-launch-stackable-49-odroid-hc1-home-cloud-200-odroid-mc1-cluster-solutions/#comment-545018
Recommended Posts