Hosting server ispconfig3 - which board to choose, please advice

[help40]

Hello ,

I am running home hosting server with several sites (4-5 sites) which have summary 3-4 k visitors

now they are running on P4 server with 3gh HT processor , 3GB ram ....

ispconfig3 - nginx(instead of apache) , php, mysql ... 

 

but I am thinking of replacement ...first I was thinking to get "thin client" ...

but now I am thinking of arm board .... but which one to chose ? 

 

may be  ODroid XU4 ? with usb3-sata adapter ...?

may be running 2 boards(servers) and dividing mysql from web server

 

please give me advice

[Igor]

3-4k visitors per month/week/day? If this is per month, XU4 is an overkill.

[help40]

3-4k visitors per month/week/day? If this is per month, XU4 is an overkill.

 

3-4k daily , but my impressions and observations are that the processor is minimal busy almost all the time

 

here is the "htop" load average (1 min , 5 min and 15 min )

 Load average: 0.19   0.20   0.18

(this is one processor , but with HT , so 2 virtual processor - so 100% load must be  2 , not 1 )

 

this is 9pm - one of the busiest times as graphics

I am attaching some statistic images .... from one of the sites which is for children's crafts

[Igor]

My traffic is around 30% less than yours. This forum plus few other sites are running on A20 with 1G memory (Olimex Lime2), SD media, ram logging, Ispconfig -> sql, nginx, dovecot, amavisd, memcached and transmission, tvheadend, samba, ... It runs smoothly and don't see any urgent need for upgrade. I am thinking to upgrade to Odroid C2 with eMMC but also some Orange Pi PC will do such job just fine.

[help40]

yes Igor and thank you , Odroid C2 with eMMC seems to be good choise ! may be I will stick with it , do you plan to release vanilla kernel for it ?

[Igor]

yes Igor and thank you , Odroid C2 with eMMC seems to be good choise ! may be I will stick with it , do you plan to release vanilla kernel for it ?

 

 

There is no trace of support for Odroid C2 in mainline / vanilla. I would say not this year. In this case rather stick to some Allwinner. They are generally well supported in mainline.

[rufik]

I'm thinking to replace my home headless server and I'd like the performance of Odroid-C2. I have Orange Pi 2 right now, but single thread performance (measured using simple sysbench calculation) od C2 is about 250% better then OPI 2 and there is no "hat style" UPS solution for that.

 

Mainline kernel support is on the way (AFAIK) for H3 and S905. Should I go for C2, stick with H3 (or maybe go for RPi3), what do you think? Isn't 64bit arch for C2 limiting pkgs repository?

[tkaiser]

single thread performance (measured using simple sysbench calculation) od C2 is about 250% better then OPI 2

 

Which sort of 'headless server' task should correlate to sysbench 'performance'? Using sysbench to compare different architectures (in this case ARMv7 and ARMv8) is impossible anyway: http://forum.odroid.com/viewtopic.php?f=136&t=19158

 

Server stuff is almost all the time either CPU bound, I/O bound or network bound (or combinations of this). And sometimes the amount of useable DRAM can be important. By starting to monitor what's happening you can choose a board that fits your needs. But sysbench will always be absolutely irrelevant unless you run a server that only does prime number calculations.

 

So it depends on the stuff you're running to get the idea where the bottlenecks are. 

[Igor]

I am not far enough with arm64 to say anything but I suspect manual package building will be needed for some cases and I won't to avoid this. C2 mainlining is too far away but you can survive with 3.14.x for a while I guess. H3 actually looks like the best choice for server - mainline support and it's cheap. I would go for Opi Plus2, where I think, it's also possible to add a battery and it comes with 2G ram.

[rufik]

I'm quite happy with old HP T5720 thin client (AMD Geode 1500 NX afair) but it's "adventure time" :-)

Arm sbc looks promising and I'd like to jump into it. My home server is idling most of the time, there is munin with some temperature monitoring from remote sensors, Apache, cloud printer via USB, sane php scanner solution, squeezebox service, some cron jobs and it's my own development platform.

So nothing heavy, mostly idling. I'd not be happy to replace it with less per-core-horsepower (it's like driving naturally aspirated engine after used to biturbo) , so I'm thinking about C2...but good software support is more important than hardware and this is my priority.

[rufik]

 

 

I would go for Opi Plus2, where I think, it's also possible to add a battery and it comes with 2G ram.

So this is not arch64 time yet :-)

Did you see any ups solution for OPI?

[Igor]

I'm quite happy with old HP T5720 thin client (AMD Geode 1500 NX afair) but it's "adventure time" :-)

Arm sbc looks promising and I'd like to jump into it. My home server is idling most of the time, there is munin with some temperature monitoring from remote sensors, Apache, cloud printer via USB, sane php scanner solution, squeezebox service, some cron jobs and it's my own development platform.

So nothing heavy, mostly idling. I'd not be happy to replace it with less per-core-horsepower (it's like driving naturally aspirated engine after used to biturbo) , so I'm thinking about C2...but good software support is more important than hardware and this is my priority.

 

http://www.igorpecovnik.com/2013/12/10/micro-home-server/

I am running all this on A20 with 1G ram. Web traffic increased to the state that some upgrade will be needed soon, otherwise it works just fine. I should mention that I am using all possible caching scenarios - server setup is optimized to perfection. There is no much room left.

 

For light servers C2 is an overkill.

[Igor]

One more info to add here: I just try to install Ispconfig3 on Odroid C2 with arm64 rootfs and it's failing. 

[rufik]

One more info to add here: I just try to install Ispconfig3 on Odroid C2 with arm64 rootfs and it's failing. 

 

So C2 arm64 is not an option right now. I'd stick with OPI/H3 but I miss UPS solution for this board...

[Igor]

H3. Yap. It looks like no simple UPS solution as seen on A20 device

[tkaiser]

H3. Yap. It looks like no simple UPS solution as seen on A20 device

 

Yes, no PMU/PMIC --> no battery support. I'm still curious whether we'll see a quad core A20 successor this year (similar performance as H3 but with AXP209 PMU support and SATA -- best choice for a small server IMO).

 

In the meantime Xunlong announced a few more boards, the OPi Plus 2E being also quite interesting for server tasks. H3 combined with SY8106A as usual, 2 GB DRAM, 16 GB eMMC, 3 available USB2.0 host ports like on OPi PC (fortunately no USB hub used and no USB port wasted for an USB-to-SATA bridge, that means you can benefit from 3 USB host ports that do not have to share bandwidth!) and some onboard WiFi accessible through SDIO.

 

Xunlong charges $35 for the board and we know already everything regarding software support: All we have to do is to combine a few bits from fex/.dts stuff for Orange Pi PC and Plus and we're done: Full Armbian support out of the box.

[rufik]

I wonder if any OPI version follows RPi HAT Specification? UPS PIco or similar could be used then...

[tkaiser]

Every Orange Pi can be powered through GPIO pins: http://linux-sunxi.org/Orange_Pi_PC

 

And just like any Allwinner SoC that comes with PMIC support the Orange Pis can also be powered through USB OTG but do not start when powered through USB only. If I were you and you already have an Orange Pi I would try to connect a cheap power bank to the Micro USB port and see what happens.

 

When I did some FEL booting in the past to test new Armbian images the Orange Pi PC never shut down when I switched power off while still connected to my build host through Micro USB. Therefore 'UPS like' behaviour should be possible by feeding 5V to the Micro USB port. But I don't know how OPi PC behaves if both power sources are present (when using Allwinner SoCs with PMIC support then it's simple but since H3 is not accompanied by a PMIC this has to be tested).

 

Please report back if you give it a try.

[rufik]

Thanks for tips. I'll try with power bank as poor's man ups solution

But this solution has disadvantages:

- cannot get information about battery's running out (for safe shutdown)

- possibly cannot be used in unattended installation, because you don't know how power bank cells react while always plugged in (charging)

 

And it's to be checked how OPI will react for running out power bank and if it will boot after power comes back...I'll try it.

[tkaiser]

And it's to be checked how OPI will react for running out power bank and if it will boot after power comes back...I'll try it.

 

That's easy: As soon as DC-IN is available again, the Orange Pi will power on again. You can even bridge the switch on the board that is used to power devices connected to the USB OTG port to 'accept' power from here. For details please see here: http://blog.atx.name/orange-pi-pc-first-impressions/

 

For all Allwinner boards that feature a SoC with PMIC support it's always like this (Pine64 being the exception):

• Boards can be powered through DC-IN, battery or USB OTG (Pine64 prevents the latter)
• If power on DC-IN connector is sufficient it will be taken from there, if not USB OTG is preferred over battery (based on my testings the PMIC chooses between different power sources but does not combine them, you can not inject a few mA here and a few there)
• To start the board when powered through the battery connector (either from a battery or with 5V) the power switch has to be pressed for the board to boot

 

So while you could solve the 'issues' you face (using 2 power banks, GPIO programming and 3 relays to discharge the batteries from time to time and 2 cameras to watch the battery leds ) a better idea would be to simply choose an Allwinner board with PMIC support. But unfortunately only A20 might be ready due to driver/software state (A31 as used on Banana Pi M2 or A83T as used on BPi M3 have the necessary hardware features but still lack software support). And that's the reason I mentioned the rumours of a pin compatible A20 successor with twice as much CPU cores (according to Olimex' Tsvetan this SoC should be announced soon and available in the 2nd half of 2016)

[zador.blood.stained]

When I did some FEL booting in the past to test new Armbian images the Orange Pi PC never shut down when I switched power off while still connected to my build host through Micro USB. Therefore 'UPS like' behaviour should be possible by feeding 5V to the Micro USB port. 

 

Looking at OPi PC schematics powering through OTG port looks more like a bug/misconfiguration than intended behaviour. It needs testing with a multimeter and USB A - microUSB cable to see if OTG port is always powered, even when standart (not OTG) cable is connected.