On Sat, Mar 05, 2016 at 12:14:54PM +0000, Gordan Bobic wrote:
On 05/03/16 12:00, Richard W.M. Jones wrote:
On Sat, Mar 05, 2016 at 11:57:11AM +0000, Gordan Bobic wrote:
On 05/03/16 11:22, Richard W.M. Jones wrote:
I wanted to permanently get rid of u-boot because I want to see if we can turn these boards into real (SBSA/SBBR) server hardware that can run RHEL.
Would putting UEFI image for chainloading onto the SD card not fulfill this requirement without the loss of flexibility incurred by losing the 1st stage u-boot loader?
I'd really just like SBSA hardware without complications. If we can get that I'll purchase dozens of these boards for OpenStack development. If not, I'll be recommending Huskyboards :-)
From what little I can find on the spec, it really doesn't look like the Huskyboard is anywhere nowhere even near the same league as the Gigabyte board. Not standard *TX form factor, one DIMM slot on the underside of the board, IIRC, non-standard power input connector. It's as awful a hack-job as most of the ARM dev kits.
"hack-job" is a bit severe. The Huskyboard is a development board, not a server board. It has two SO-DIMM slots, so I guess it should take 8 or 16 GB of laptop memory, which is fine for our development needs. Not something you'd want in a production server of course.
It will also have SBSA out of the box, so it'll just run RHEL (and, one day, Windows). It has a nicer processor - the AMD Seattle.
It's also half the price of the Gigabyte.
OTOH, the MP30-AR0 is standard Micro-ATX in every way, and can take up to 128GB of RAM (it's a bit surreal of amazing to suddenly go from bashing my head against the limits of tiny memory on ARM bords to one that I can just fill up with 128GB of RAM I have lying around!).
Believe me, I'm appreciating the 32 GB in this Gigabyte board, and may upgrade it to 64 GB. Previously I had only 16 GB in any ARM system (Mustang) which is usable, but a bit tight when you're doing lots of virt.
Softiron Overdrive 3000 comes close in terms of spec, but unlike the Gigabyte, I cannot just click it into the shopping cart, hand over my payment details and expect it to be in my hands 48 hours later. And it is probably more expensive than even MP30-AR0.
Existence is definitely good. That's why I'm evaluating the Gigabyte.
Rich.