Rugged Linux Server For Rural, Tropical Environment? 236
travalas writes "Last year I moved to Rural Bangladesh. My work is pretty diverse, everything from hacking web apps to designing building materials. Increasingly a Linux VM on my MacBook Pro is insufficient due to storage speed/processing constraints and the desire to interface more easily with some sensor packages.
There are a few issues that make that make a standard server less than desirable. This server will generally not be running with any sort of climate control and it may need to move to different locations so would also be helpful if it was somewhat portable. The environment here is hot, humid and dusty and brutal on technology and power is very inconsistent so it will often be on a combination of Interruptible Power Supply and solar power. So a UPS is a must and low power consumption desirable, so it strikes me that an Integrated UPS a la Google's servers would be handy. Spec wise it needs to be it needs to be able to handle several VM's and some other processor storage intensive tasks. So 4 cores, 8GB of ram and 3-4 TB of SATA storage seems like a place to start for processing specs. What sort of hardware would you recommend without breaking the bank?"
Re:All that and ruggedized? (Score:5, Interesting)
To give you some sense of what I'm getting at:
I pay about $1500 for a ruggedized setup like you're talking about -- except it's a pentium class processor with 128MB of RAM and 256MB of flash.
Not enough info (Score:3, Interesting)
What exactly are you doing, and why does your server need to be on site?
If you really need to be lugging all that around the wilderness, it's not going to be cheap.
I do espy a kind of hope: (Score:5, Interesting)
4 cores, 8GB of RAM, and 3-4 TB of HDD is, these days, a slightly nicer than average; but hardly exotic, desktop computer. The nice thing about desktops is that, unlike servers, they are designed to deal with human environments, rather than datacenter ones. No AC, cat hair, cigarette smoke, that sort of thing. Plus, they are cheap and almost exactly the shape of a small rolling suitcase.
Since the environment is nasty, you'll want to make sure that the system has enough fans to keep things cool even if one conks out when you aren't there, and you'll want to have at least one spare drive in your RAID.
There is a good solution to your problem, probably manufactured to mil-spec by General Dynamics, that costs 50 times as much as you can afford; but, in this case, you might well be able to get away with doing it the cheap way, since your computational requirements are actually fairly modest.
toughbook + satellite internet (Score:5, Interesting)
get a toughbook, a satellite uplink, and colo a server somewhere controlled.
seriously. finding the computational strength you want with the power restrictions is not going to happen.
my company just shipped some units to a desert in the middle east (can't mention where). we bought an entire trailer and powering units (generators, solar, etc) to provide the juice to run the servers and air conditioning. it was _not_ cheap. you can do that or you can remote to a controlled area.
Two Options (Score:3, Interesting)
I can think of two options.
Option one:
That would do most of what you want. No graphics, but it would work well. You can have all the storage and CPU power you can use. You could even set it up like a batch processing cluster.
Option two:
You will not get what you want for a reasonable price, you want too much. High powered computers can't be put everywhere on Earth regardless of infrastructure. They really need some basic environment controls and good power.
Dehumidifier (Score:4, Interesting)
A good desktop and a van for storage (Score:1, Interesting)
At the worst case, you can run use the van to move, cool and power the machine... cover the roof with solar panels and use gas when you have to...
Re:Dehumidifier (Score:1, Interesting)
Humidity isn't going to be the problem. With as much heat as wll be generated, you won't get to much condensation. The internal temperature of whatever enclosure you have will be way above the dew point. My advice would be a large tower case inside a bigger encluser witha lot of surface area to disappate heat. If you keep it sealed aganst dirt the humidty will take care of itself. Look at industrial controls housings for clues.
The real problem will be power. What you are talking about takes at least a couple of hudred watts, and a solar array that can come close to supportig that is NOT going to be portable. To combine solar and line power and sof heafty batteries is going to require some sophistocated controls too.
Re:Silicon (Score:4, Interesting)
I would actually go for a sealed box with cooling fins and then some water cooling with an external radiator and fans.
Sealed box - mostly to keep any kind of bugs out of the box and also to try to keep the humidity down. Add some silica gel inside to keep it dry.
Remember that silica gel can be re-used, you just have to dry it in some way.
I'm assuming that the box doesn't have to be deluge-proof, so just make it reasonably sealed. Add thermometers and possibly a small radiator/fan inside for general cooling of the PSU air.
With water cooling you will get a stable temperature and be able to get rid of a lot of heat - and be able to vent the heat outdoors.
Also select the most power-efficient PSU you can get your hands on to avoid unnecessary heat.
And for UPS - that shall be located in a separate compartment to avoid catastrophic problems in case you get a battery leak.
Mounting the whole box on inflatable rubber wheels would be a good idea - not only for moving it, but the rubber wheels can also provide vibration dampening when transporting.
Rugged things get heavy.
And don't forget - mount the hard drives using extra shock-proofing in some way. Mirrored drives is also a good idea since it may save you from some agony.
Ask for sponsorships! (Score:1, Interesting)
If you are spending time in the jungle in Bangladesh hacking web apps and designing building materials, it sounds like you are doing something Good(tm).
If you do identify some suitable products or components, you might want to ask the suppliers to sponsor you or work with you to develop a solution.
Re:All that and ruggedized? (Score:4, Interesting)
Read his environmental description.
Maximum historical temperature in Bangladesh is >40C; what kind of place is this server going to be stored? Move to different locations? No climate control? I can easily see requiring >85C handling.
Rainy season means high humidity.
The 5W power requirement is flexible, but remember that adding 1W of power increases your solar power costs -- to the tune of $22 or so in panelling (in Bangladesh), not including any secondary costs.
Dusty? Okay, use fans if you really want to. Be prepared for frequent failures, or a regular routine of cleaning and replacing filters.
Unreliable power and using solar? Yeah, you're going to want to gracefully handle some really nasty transients.
No, my requirements are not exactly the same as his. But the point is that he's running in a really hostile environment, like I am, and it's going to cost him.
Re:Less than 5W of power? (Score:3, Interesting)
-40C-+85C costs more than 0C-50C, but it costs less than -70C-+120C.
Um, forget about the computer, but at +120C, isn't the user of the computer going to have a bit of a problem? Or does Dell also sell "Rugged Users" along with its "Rugged Laptops? http://www.dell.com/xfr [dell.com]"
"Thank you for ordering a Dell Rugged Laptop, would you also like to order a Dell 'Hard Guy' Rugged User along with that? Ballistic Armor for the laptop, user or both?"
How portable exactly? (Score:4, Interesting)
My experience was that it was best to buy standard mid range kit (IBM, or Dell Poweredge servers in tower cases worked just fine) and then invest in some physical infrastructure and climate control. It was generally straightforward enough to find a secure corner of an office and put install a small self contained rack with a UPS or two. Or even better get someone to wall up a corner of an office and put in an aircon. That kind of skill was in plentyful supply.
Lugging around some serious kit in that kind of environment would give me sleepless nights. The chance of it getting dropped, rained on or stolen is just too high. (We had a couple of laptops stolen while I was there, and you aint going to be happy chap if you come back to your hotel one night and find your server has gone walkies.) I advise you try and travel with what you need, preferrably a run of the mill inconspicuous laptop and find a secure base or two for your servers.
Re:What could you possibly be doing ... (Score:1, Interesting)
What could you possibly be doing ... in rural Bangladesh that requires 4 cores, 8GB Ram, and 4 TB of storage?
Scientific work, CAD work, analyzing sensor output... there is plenty of things you could be doing in the middle of nowhere that requires rugged computing power and lots of storage.
First Off (Score:5, Interesting)
Define Portable.
That's the first thing we need to know as it defines what type of system I'd recommend. Forgoing that information, what I would suggest is dropping Windows from the equation and switch to ARM processor base systems. This gives you the advantage of replacing all of the Linux VM's with standard Hardware, providing multiple redundancies. Another advantage is that the ARM systems can be spec'd to run on as little as 1watt of power (incl HD's) and since they're full linux boxes, you can easily administer them using SSH from a Windows box such as your current laptop.
The hardware redundancy offered by this is enormous and as the units they can easily be powered by a single Solar panel (sized correctly) combined with a large Deep Cycle 12 volt battery. Use Pico Power supplies (12volt input) and you've got your portable data center. The biggest thing you need to do is ensure that your Solar Panel has sufficient power to recharge the battery while powering the ARM systems. This means figure on at least 2x Solar Wattage over maximum demand to properly recharge the battery to handle a full run overnight. EG: 24 watts of demand means a single 55watt PV panel, though I'd look at using a pair of smaller 30 watt panels for redundancy in case you break a panel. It means you'd be able to run the system at reduced levels. One last item is provide an auxiliary power input for charging the battery bank from a vehicle or generator.
Re:Silicon (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Go Small or Go Home (Score:3, Interesting)
As a thought (I'm replying to you since you're apparently somewhat expert at this), how does a cluster of ruggedized laptops sound? I worked with these thing in Iraq, and I was quite impressed with their ability to resist the elements. On the plus side, the machines are very rugged, very portable, and when combined make for a fair amount of processing power. They're more resistant to power outages than even a good UPS setup would allow and with a clustered file system they have a good amount of storage. On the downside they're going to used more power. A cluster is always going to used more power than single system. This can mitigated by allowing systems to use power management, but no matter how you do it, a fully loaded cluster is going to consume more power than a fully loaded server.
Re:All that and ruggedized? (Score:5, Interesting)
We had a lot of success with Toughbooks in Iraq. As far as heat and dust go they are amazing. We never dealt with the kind of cold you're talking about, but since the Army uses them for arctic ops I assume they're capable there too. Of the roughly 25 Toughbooks my command was issued at the beginning of our 1 year tour, we had hard drives die in 2 of them, and no other problems. By my estimation that's more or less normal failure expectation for 25 machines. My thought on OPs problem is a cluster of Toughbooks. 4 of them with a clustered file system setup with the clustered equivalent of a RAID5 for storage. A lot depends on his definition of cheap. Something like I'm talking about would be redundant, able to handle long term power outages, and provide the needed horsepower, for a cost in the neighborhood of 10-15K. It would burn more power than a single server when running on solar though.
Netbooks (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:All that and ruggedized? (Score:2, Interesting)
Are you willing to hack a little? (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't know any off the shelf solution that meets all the requester's needs, but with a little backwoods / third world ingenuity, I think it can be done.
Seconded, start with a laptop. It's already met a whole bunch of your needs. The big missing piece is environmental hardening. Since it only needs to be moderately portable, there are a few things you can do.
#1, put the whole setup in a small refrigerator. Seriously. It's an airtight, watertight box. It'll keep out dust, rain and bugs, in addition to obviously keeping everything cool. Set the temperature as high as it'll go, there's no advantage to keeping the system any cooler than 20-25C, but the cooler you make it, the more problems you'll have with condensation on the evaporator coils. Deal with condensation by keeping down the number of times you open the fridge, and have some microfiber towels under the coils to catch the occasional drips. Loosely wrapping might work, but be careful not to over insulate the coils.
The downside: You'll take a hit on power efficiency, but I'm willing to bet that a decked out laptop and a small fridge pull less power than even the best servers will. Very small fridges based on peltier coolers are even less efficient, but their small size may make up for it. Also plan for what happens when the power goes out: The laptop keeps running, so make sure to have a UPS for the fridge, or that the laptop's battery will die before it gets too hot, or better yet, monitor a temperature sensor, and shut down gracefully when it starts getting too hot.
It's also a good solution because a fridge is relatively easily serviceable or replaceable compared to server parts. You'll need to carry spares for the laptop, of course.
Idea #2: Similar to above, but build your own peltier fridge. The main advantage is that you can make a custom enclosure to hold everything, which will keep the size and weight down.
Idea #3: Just build a hushbox for the laptop. Basically, you build a box around it, with some cooling fans, and furnace filters on the inlets. It'll take care of dust. You might have to shut down in extreme heat, and extreme humidity won't be handled.
Idea #4: Rugged laptops, like the ToughBook. They're ready to handle dust, moisture, physical abuse, etc, and with upgrades, can get near to the specs you're looking for. These might work well in combination with the suggestions above.
Re:All that and ruggedized? (Score:2, Interesting)
Don't be ridiculous. Kerala (India), where I am from, has pretty much the same conditions. We have tropical weather, is hotter than Bangladesh and is closer to the coast.
We manage to run our computers and UPS just fine without any modifications. Just don't put your computer close to walls - they get hot. Also make sure that you put your computer table legs in a plate of water / keep fan outlets covered with mesh. That way ants/flies can't get into the computer.
I bought my first computer when I was in Chennai which is even hotter and humid. It broke down and i thought it was overheating because it had no AC - turns out it was a bad memory DIMM. I fixed it and it ran like a champ for 3 years. I never turned it off since we used it in our dorm (hostel) as a gaming server.
That'll pretty much do it for the life of the computer.
Re:All that and ruggedized? (Score:5, Interesting)
All he really needs is a laptop with 2 internal 500 gig hard disks, so he can run them as a RAID1. In other words, a sub-$1k 17" laptop.
Benefits:
If he needs more storage space for backup or data, mount a few external hard drives, or make a cluster of laptops.