Helios4 Personal Cloud DIY NAS Supports 3.5″ Hard Drives, RAID, and More (Crowdfunding)

A few months ago, we covered GnuBee Personal Cloud 1, a NAS that runs on open source software, and that supports up to six 2.5″ SATA drives. The crowdfunding has been successful – after lowering the funding target -, and backers should hopefully get the NAS right after summer. But at the time, some people complained about the  memory capacity (512MB),  the lack of support for 3.5″ drives, and a few other items. A new project called “Helios4 Personal Cloud” addresses many of those concerns. It comes with 1 to 2GB RAM, enclosure supporting four 3.5″ drives, supports RAID, and is powered by Marvell ARMADA 388 processor that has been specifically designed for this type of application. Helios4 NAS specifications: SoC – Marvell ARMADA 388 dual core Cortex A9 processor @ up to 1.866 GHz with RAID5/6 acceleration engines, security acceleration engines, etc… System Memory – 1 or 2 GB […]

Christmann RECS|Box Atlas Quad Apalis Microserver Evaluation Kit Supports Four Toradex Apalis SoM

System-on-modules are normally used in low volume embedded systems, but they can also be used in microservers, for example to upgrade capacity as needed. Christmann informationstechnik + medien GmbH has developed a microserver evaluation kit taking up to 4 Toradex Apalis SoMs for example based on Nvidia Tegra K1 processor, and also offers full rack systems with up to 72 modules. Christmann RECS|Box Atlas Quad Apalis specifications: Modules – 4x Slots for Apalis SoM Connectivity – 1 GBit/s Compute Ethernet, 1 GBit/s Management Ethernet Video Output – 1x HDMI USB – 3x USB host ports, 1x micro USB port Misc – 5 Status LEDs for USB, communication, and serial console, 4x fan connectors, KWM switch, 5x temperature sensors, 6x current sensors, 1x voltage monitor, fan speed monitoring Power Supply – 12V via a 4-pin jack Dimensions – 300 x 145 x 68 mm The evaluation kit includes an Atlas board […]

Packet 96-core Cavium ThunderX Baremetal ARMv8 Servers are Available for $0.50 per Hour, $372 per Month

Last week, I wrote about Scaleway ARMV8 cloud servers powered by Cavium ThunderX processors. They are very cheap, as low as 0.0006 Euros per hour or 2.99 Euros per month, but you only get access to 2 to 8 cores, so obviously you don’t get a baremetal server for that price.  If you want the latter Packet.net has been offering just that since the end of last year with their Type 2A baremetal server with two Cavium ThunderX 48-core processors, 128 GB RAM, 384 GB SSD and 20 Gbps bandwidth. The servers can currently run Centos 7, CoreOS, Ubuntu 16.04 LTS,  with support for container platforms such as CoreOS Tectonic, Rancher, Docker Cloud, ContainerShip, StackEngine, Docker Machine, etc… You can check the status for other operating systems and features and the roadmap page. They also have x86 servers, and I’ve included the hourly and monthly prices and features for all […]

Cavium ThunderX based Scaleway ARMv8 Cloud Servers Go for 2.99 Euros per Month and Up

Scaleway launched 32-bit ARM server hosting services in 2015 for 10 Euros per month, before dropping the price to 2.99 Euros per month half-year later, and now the company has just launched a new offering with 64-bit ARM servers powered by Cavium ThunderX processor going for 2.99 to 11.99 Euros per month depending on configuration. The processors are equipped with DDR4 ECC memory, and all three services included unlimited transfer, so you don’t need to pay for any bandwidth fee. While the price is shown per month, you’ll be billed by the hour (0.006 Euro/h for ARM64-2GB), so if you are using those for development it may even cost less per month, as you can turn them off when not working. All server are located in a Paris data center in France, and runs Ubuntu 16.04, but more operating systems and “InstantApps” will be added to the selection. More servers […]

Headless Mode to be Supported in Chrome and Firefox Browsers

Good news! You can now use Chrome browser without display… Wait… What? While most users want to actually see the page they load in a web browser, some may want to run their browser in a server without display. Headless mode in web browsers can be used for automated testing requiring loading web pages, extracting metadata, generating bitmaps from page contents, etc… It’s been possible to do so in the past using Xvfb to emulate a framebuffer tricking the browsers to believe there was a display in Linux. But now headless mode is build-in right into browsers, so you don’t need X server running at all, and beside Linux, it will also work in Windows, and Mac OS. You can launch headless mode in Chrome 59 (currently in dev channel) as follows:

You may want to add –disable gpu option to remove an error message. Then go to http://localhost:9222, […]

GnuBee Personal Cloud 1 Low Cost Linux NAS Supports Up to Six 2.5″ SATA Drives (Crowdfunding)

Networked Access Storage (NAS) with a large number of SATA bays usually cost several hundreds dollars up to thousands of dollars depending on the features set and performance, but there’s a new a project called GnuBee Personal Cloud 1, or GB-PC1, that delivers a MIPS Linux system supporting up to six 2.5″ SATA drives for less than $200. GB-PC1 NAS specifications: Processor – MediaTek MT7621A dual core, quad thread processor @ 880 MHz, overclockable to 1.2 GHz System Memory – 512 MB DDR3 Storage – micro SD card slot tested up to 64 GB, 6x 2.5” SATA HDD or SSD Connectivity – Dual Gigabit Ethernet USB – 1x USB 3.0 port, 2x USB 2.0 ports Serial port – 3-pin J1 connector or 3.5 mm audio-type jack Power – 12 VDC @ 3 A via 5.5 mm x 2.1 mm, center-positive barrel jack Dimensions –  21.6 cm (L) x 7 cm […]

Xtream Codes IPTV Panel 2.4.2 Review – Part 4: Tutorial to Change the Main Server, Backup & Restore the Database

This is the fourth part of a review about Xtream Codes IPTV Panel, software to become your own content provider, and manage streams, clients, and resellers. The first three parts: Review of Xtream-Codes IPTV Panel Professional Edition – Part 1: Introduction, Initial Setup, Adding Streams… Xtream Codes IPTV Panel Review – Part 2: Movie Data Editing, Security, Resellers, Users and Pricing Management Xtream-Codes IPTV Panel Review – Part 3: Updates and New Features for Version 2.4.2 Main Server Change – Part 1: New Server Changing your Main Server could bring you troubles, if you do not know what you are doing. Many different reasons to change the Main server such as  crashes, new one. making a Load Balancer to be a Main Server… Remember, it’s all about the existing backup, and you’ll restore your backup later, after successfully changing the Main Server. That is not difficult and everybody can do […]

Socionext SC2A11 Low Power Server Processor Comes with 24 Cortex-A53 Cores, Scales up to 1536 Cores via PCIe

Socionext SC2A11 is an 24-core (tetracosa) ARM Cortex-A53 processor designed for low-power server system suitable for edge computing, web server & indexing, cloud computing, and any applications that do not require high single thread peak performance. The company also designed SC2A20 switch SoC that allows up to 64 SC2A11 processors (1536 cores) to communicate over PCI Express using Socionext DDT (Direct Data Transaction). SC2A11 SoC specifications: Processor – 24x ARM Cortex-A53 MPCore cores @ up to 1GHz, with 32KB/32KB I/D L1 cache, 256 KB L2 cache, and 4MB L3 cache Memory I/F – DDR4-2133Mbps 64-bit + ECC Flash I/F – HSSPI, eMMC PCIe – PCI Express Gen2, Root/Endpoint select, 4 lanes (2 systems/ for SoC IF) LAN – 2x 1Gbps with IPSec Network Offload Engine (wire-speed) Serial I/F – UART, I2C, GPIO The company did not provide any info about software, but it’s safe to assume it’s running Linux. There’s […]

UP 7000 x86 SBC