Raspberry Pi Dedis - What do you think?

natvps_uk · December 2021

As we're finalising the Micronode private beta I'm looking to get an idea on what people would want in this market.

We're mainly looking at the "higher end" Raspberry Pi boards but I'd like to do something for the "low end" community.

I have a huge amount of earlier model Pi's with a single ARM core and 512MB RAM and we have confirmed that these do work with our provisioning software. - I'm looking to see if there would be any interest in these 16GB Storage, automated provisioning, NAT/IPv6 Only.

If there is an interest I may be able to offer them pretty cheap at around £2 per month. If not then I will concentrate on the 8GB models with decent storage options.

AlwaysSkint · December 2021

Need to redo your poll - 1st option you've put in as the title.

natvps_uk · December 2021

@AlwaysSkint said:
Need to redo your poll - 1st option you've put in as the title.

Oops! Sorted now, thanks!

chimichurri · December 2021

You probably need to make it cheaper in case you're looking for LES customers

To give you an idea who you might be competing with:
https://www.ikoula.com/en/dedicated-server have servers for less than half of the poll price (Pi 4 4GB)
https://my2.dataideas.com/store/rpi-servers have servers not as cheap as Ikoula, but still cheaper than the poll pricing (or the Zero mentioned in OP), and with a dedicated IP (v4)

natvps_uk · December 2021

@chimichurri said:
You probably need to make it cheaper in case you're looking for LES customers

To give you an idea who you might be competing with:
https://www.ikoula.com/en/dedicated-server have servers for less than half of the poll price (Pi 4 4GB)
https://my2.dataideas.com/store/rpi-servers have servers not as cheap as Ikoula, but still cheaper than the poll pricing (or the Zero mentioned in OP), and with a dedicated IP (v4)

Yes they aren't as cheap as other locations however neither of the providers you pointed out are UK based. On top of the location neither operate automated provisioning or hardware reboots from what I can see.

They also don't appear to offer addons such as SSDs, HDDs or send your own disk which we absolutely will.

Our prices are not set in stone although as we will not immediately be doing this at scale the profit margin is initially low and the prices above will not earn us a profit with the rack space that we are purchasing initially and the amount of devices we have for launch.

natvps_uk · December 2021

Also to add to the above there is the potential that we can do more to give the client a better deal, I'm not opposed to offering these with better storage options to offset the higher prices although collocation in the UK is substantially more expensive when compared to mainland Europe or the USA.

We are also investigating other locations which will almost certainly be cheaper although these will not be available at launch.

chimichurri · December 2021

Yes they aren't as cheap as other locations however neither of the providers you pointed out are UK based.

Well, while I agree Texas might be suboptimal for people from that area, unless it's a legal requirement, I believe network-wise, France is basically the same as the UK for people from the UK... ^^'

On top of the location neither operate automated provisioning or hardware reboots from what I can see.

True, but I don't think many people expect this to be the case anyway (this is LES and not HES after all ;P)

They also don't appear to offer addons such as SSDs, HDDs or send your own disk which we absolutely will.

The guys in Texas do have a "Ship/Buy A Drive" option, as well as more SSD space, here's an alternative link: https://rpiservers.com/

I'm not opposed to offering these with better storage options to offset the higher prices

This might be interesting... Do you happen to have a lot of hard disks lying around as well?
One thing I personally (and perhaps others as well) would be interested is cheap NAT storage (where cheap means something around 2 US dollars a month per terabyte )

We are also investigating other locations which will almost certainly be cheaper although these will not be available at launch.

Cool! Maybe you'd be able to launch TB-scale storage Pi offers suggested above over there? (I for one would welcome lower prices, as I don't really care about the server location)

natvps_uk · December 2021

This might be interesting... Do you happen to have a lot of hard disks lying around as well?

I don’t have a load of disks currently although in reality they are cheap and a one off purchase. The difficulty with disks isn’t even related to the cost, it’s down to the additional space taken in the rack and the power requirements.

I think I can do a special with a large amount of storage though and it’s definitely something I’ll work on before launch.

Mr_Tom · December 2021

Interesting ideas. The only other UK company I know of off hand doing Pi's is Mythic Beasts. They're good, but certainly not low end lol.

Edit: I know pricing in the poll isn't "low end" enough for some but if anyone wanted to compare to another UK host - https://www.mythic-beasts.com/order/rpi/

james50a · December 2021

personally i feel like the pi is a great tinker board but from a colocation perspective there are more powerful sbc options from a straight compute standpoint that I feel would make more sense.

natvps_uk · December 2021

@james50a said:
personally i feel like the pi is a great tinker board but from a colocation perspective there are more powerful sbc options from a straight compute standpoint that I feel would make more sense.

We’re not limiting ourselves to RPIs by any means but in terms of general availability and software support they are by far the best to start off with.

We also have 5x AMD based x86 options for the launch along with a handful of devices from the Friendly Arm range including some boards with 8 core CPUs - these are not currently supported by our provisioning software and will be manual setup only. They also likely fall outside of the low end price ranges that people expect here.

natvps_uk · December 2021

Just to update on the beta - We've been given an installation date of the 6th January. I will be announcing the public Beta on the 7th and how you can participate.

The DC is Wildcard Networks in Newcastle Upon Tyne.

I have been able to finalise the base costs and all of the MicroNode products are controlled with the Micronode control panel. Whilst the prices may not be low end enough for some we will be having specials going forward.
The initial products available are as follows:

MicroNode x86 - 16GB
Dual Core AMD G-Series APU
4GB RAM
16GB EMMC Disk
IPv4 & IPv6
Gigabit port
£9 Monthly

MicroNode x86 - 64GB
Dual Core AMD G-Series APU
4GB RAM
64GB SSD
IPv4 & IPv6
Gigabit Port
£10 Monthly

MicroNode x86 - 128GB
Dual Core AMD G-Series APU
4GB RAM
128GB SSD
Gigabit Port
IPv4 & IPv6
£11 Monthly

Raspberry Pi Model B
Single Core ARM CPU
512MB RAM
16GB disk
100Mb Port
IPv6 and NAT IPv4
£3 Monthly

Raspberry Pi 4 - 8GB
Quad Core ARM CPU
8GB RAM
64GB Disk
Gigabit Port
IPv4 & IPv6
£11 Monthly

Raspberry Pi 4 - 4GB
Quad Core ARM CPU
4GB RAM
16GB Disk
Gigabit Port
IPv4 & IPv6
£10 Monthly

Raspberry Pi 4 - 2GB
Quad Core ARM CPU
2GB RAM
16GB Disk
Gigabit Port
IPv4 & IPv6
£8 Monthly

Micro KVM 1GB
Single Ryzen Core (Dedicated)
KVM Virtualisation
4GB RAM
256GB NVME Disk!
Gigabit Port
IPv4 & IPv6
£6 Monthly

I look forward to announcing the Beta in the new year, in the meantime I wish everyone a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

havoc · December 2021

Are these on SD cards?

natvps_uk · December 2021

@havoc said:
Are these on SD cards?

The only products on SD cards are the Pi4 range, the Pi 1’s do have an SD card for boot/provisioning although the storage is over USB.

We do have other storage options available on the Pi 4’s starting from 128GB SSDs to 2TB HDDs.

The SD cards we use for the Pi 4 range are rated for sustained read write and we’ve had good success with them during testing over the last year.

Janevski · December 2021

Hetzner Cloud is a lot better option for such money.
RPI simply has not enough bandwidth, nor processing power.
It's nice to plug a spare junk rpi at home lying around and host a static file server just for the fun of it, but buying or renting a dedicated pi, is simply too expensive and not enough power, just so the card dies on you within a year or so and you lose all your data on it.

natvps_uk · December 2021

@Janevski said:
Hetzner Cloud is a lot better option for such money.
RPI simply has not enough bandwidth, nor processing power.
It's nice to plug a spare junk rpi at home lying around and host a static file server just for the fun of it, but buying or renting a dedicated pi, is simply too expensive and not enough power, just so the card dies on you within a year or so and you lose all your data on it.

This is purely an addition to our other services, some people want more dedicated resources. The raspberry pi products we have are a cheap way into this although we actually have less of them available compared to the x86 options available at launch. They aren’t for everyone and in most cases a VPS is the better option hence why we are also including KVM VPS’ in the Micronode range.

The Pi 4 is actually very capable and as mentioned above SD cards are not the only option for storage.

In terms of “SD cards failing within a year and loosing all of your data” we do offer free backup space up to 200% of your available storage over either ssh or NFS.

We can’t please everyone and in some cases we can’t compete on price alone but we are doing our absolute best to offer an excellent service with many options from openvz NAT VPS’ from £2 per quarter to Raspberry Pi dedicated servers starting at £3 per month and £10 per month x86 dedicated servers.

Whilst I appreciate your input I feel that hetzner cloud is suited to a very different use case and is not a good comparison.

Raspberry Pi Dedis - What do you think?

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