[Arm-dev] What's the best support hardware model ?

Tue Dec 1 12:46:25 UTC 2015
Gordan Bobic <gordan at redsleeve.org>

On 2015-12-01 12:36, Karanbir Singh wrote:
> On 01/12/15 12:32, Gordan Bobic wrote:
>> On 2015-12-01 12:12, Karanbir Singh wrote:
>>> On 01/12/15 10:11, Andreas Reschke wrote:
>>>> Hi there,
>>>> I want to replace some servers (SOHO, Mail-, web-, Infrastructure,
>>>> X86_64, all with CentOS) with ARM-Servers. I've a /home-Server with
>>>> Odroid XU4 (Cloudshell) with Fedora running fine.
>>>> 
>>>> Are there other ARM-Devices running CentOS easy?
>>> 
>>> there are -no- ARMv7 grade server hardware available, there are 
>>> single
>>> board units, none of which are capable of running infrastructure
>>> services for any reasonable performance. the cubietruck seems the 
>>> most
>>> 'capable' but still falls well short of reasonable performance.
>>> 
>>> There are however ARMv8 based server's that are available, the APM
>>> Mustang class of boards are well supported in CentOS Linux 7 and are
>>> perhaps the most widely available.
>>> 
>>> this does however take into consideration my own interpretation of 
>>> what
>>> might be considered 'reasonable performance'.
>> 
>> ARMv7 server grade hardware does exist. It wasn't so long ago that
>> I was helping the guys at Boston get RedSleeve 6 getting up and
>> running on their Viridis servers:
>> 
>> https://www.boston.co.uk/solutions/viridis/default.aspx
> 
> I believe the viridis platform has been discontinued for a few years 
> now,

Has it? I seem to recall getting RSEL6 running on it 4 years ago,
and it has had a refresh since then. If it has been discontinued
it must have been relatively recently.

And decent ARMv8 hardware is not actually that easily available, at
least in UK. There's a lot of posturing and press releases but very
little actual hardware to show for it. And if you can ever find it
commercially it is disproportionately expensive for what it is.

Gordan