TIP for short-depth rack server for FOG?
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Hi,
I am looking for short-depth rackmount (ideally 4-bay) server for FOG instalation.
Best I found is Synology Rackstation but it comes with own OS (DSM), is not cheap etc.
Do you have some tips for similar hardware, platform independent?
Thanks.
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How short of depth?
Really from a fog server standpoint you don’t need much horse power if you are installing it on bare metal. I quad core processor with 8GB of ram and fast sata drives in raid-1 is probably enough. The goal for the fog server is to move the image from disk to the network adapter the fastest it can. All the heavy lifting of imaging is done by the target computer not the fog server. Now outside of imaging, the fog server also manages clients where the fog service is installed. Depending on the number of fog clients in your environment I may need to bump up the server specs because the fog server will be doing more than just imaging.
FWIW I can run FOG on a raspberry pi 2. For single unicast imaging it works just fine. If I was hitting it with 20 fog clients it would have some issues while imaging.
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Hi,
I am looking to have storage node running together with FOG service for cca up to 50-100 clients. The target is to have big capacity (>10TB per HDD), 2-4bays and 1U, max 2U rack format with depth up to 31 cm.
Very similar to my requirements is RackStation RS1219+ (2U, depth 30 cm). It is not platform independent and also not cheap so therefore i am looking for different product where can i setup own Debian.
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@krejci You are going to have a difficult time finding a server that meets your requirements, especially with a 31cm depth. Maybe a 37cm depth, but 31 will be really difficult unless you have a custom system. One issue is that 31cm is close to the ATX style motherboard in size. Also to get >10TiB drives you need 3.5" drives since 2.5" drives are not at the 10TiB capacity yet.
I did find this chassis with a 40cm depth, but it is a build your own server. Its not an already complete server, just the chassis: https://www.newegg.com/p/N82E16811219052
In theory you should be able to get FOG running on a synology nas since the nas OS (DSM) is based on linux. I have not tried to do this, but DSM has most of the components needed. You may need to add additional RAM to the rackstation to support both DSM and FOG. Again, I can’t say for 100% sure it will work, only it should work with some hard work. I can say I have turned a synology nas into a FOG Storage Node (not the main server) before, and it works. I have a tutorial here: https://forums.fogproject.org/topic/9430/synology-nas-as-fog-storage-node
