DELL WYSE 5070 Cluster

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Bjorn Smith

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Sep 3, 2019
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Hi,

I have just bought 5 of these babies - and I wonder what any of you would recommend for a cluster solution?

Proxmox cluster across all 5?
RancherOS or similar and then kubernetes
Something else?

These machines are fairly low power, Intel Pentium J5005, 8GB RAM each, but they can apparently get upgraded to 32GB each using very specific RAM modules. So if I can get 32GB in each, it opens up a lot of nice possibilities.
 
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Bjorn Smith

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Update - I have received my machines.

I ended up installing Rocky Linux, docker - and then on my existing docker server I installed Rancher - added the wyse machines as a kubernetes cluster.

After having trouble setting everything up, getting to know rancher - I must say I am impressed how flawless it just seems to work when you deploy an application on kubernetes and just scale to multiple pods just by clicking a button and a couple of seconds after its already running on the machine.

For now I will just keep them at 8GB RAM each, since it should be plenty for a lot of applications - unless they are memory hungry of course.

I just deployed my blog as a nginx pod across all the machines - and docker says the container is using a measly 4MB of ram - so even though the kubernetes containers take up a couple of gigs, there are still plenty of memory to deploy small pods like my nginx.
 
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Bjorn Smith

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I have made a post about this - so others can have an easier time getting into kubernetes than I have had - so if anyone is reading this and is feeling up to giving me some feedback, please read:


I have verified the "recipy" many times as I recreated my cluster for the nth time after yet another trial and error.

I have even automated many of these steps into my kickstart file, so my machines gets pre-burned with the correct settings.

This seems like an "easy" way to get a "raw" kubernetes cluster going - with Rancher as a UI - if you don't want to install everything into a single docker container.

And send any feedback my way.

P.S. If any moderator does not like me linking to my own blog - feel free to delete this post.
 

Bjorn Smith

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I have just bought one of these modules: Crucial CT16G4SFRA266 - just to see if it can run - if it does I will report back here so others can know yet another module that might work in this machine. It will be awesome if it works, then I can upgrade all 5 machines to 32GB of ram each (If my wallet allows) - and then I will have a combined 160GB across the cluster :-D
 
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Bjorn Smith

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Aand it arrived - I plugged it in - and voila - one of my nodes have 20GB of RAM - so I can confirm that it at least boots with this memory - so I am guessing it just works.

So I guess I will need to spend some money to get my cluster upgraded to 5x2x16GB of these modules.
 
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