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Is an ARM cluster a good idea? (alien.top)

submitted 11 months ago by bobdvb@alien.top to c/homelab@selfhosted.forum

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I have the possibility of getting my hands on a practically unlimited supply of S905X2 Android boxes, they have 2GB of RAM and 8GB eMMC, only 100Mbit LAN but USB-3 as well.

I was joking around with colleagues, what about making an ARM cluster out of them? Use the 100Mbps port as a management port and add a USB3 Gigabit or 2.5G adapter for general traffic. Power the cluster by PoE using PoE to 5v splitters from a smart, management switch with PoE (10W each box?).

Lets say I got 40 boxes with 4 cores, that's 160 cores and 80GB of RAM. It could run Armbian with Kubernetes or something lighter. I personally have no use for it, but it could be a fun proof of concept?

Tell me why I shouldn't do this! Tell me why it won't work and why I'd be wasting my time.

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[–] adanufgail@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago

If you're looking to try learning about cluster management without running up a huge AWS bill, sure. But you're not going to be doing anything with it you couldn't do with some random PC with way more cores and horsepower, plus way more RAM (the vast majority of that 2GB in each box is going to be going to running the OS and the cluster client).

If you could get a bunch of PS3s or ASICs free, then you could actually do work that could net you some money: mine crypto (if it's even worth doing at any given time based on electricity cost).