Squeezing hyper-convergence into the overhead bin, for barely $1,000/server: the story of Project Kepler-47
I was walking through technet one day...
Chris
I was walking through technet one day...
Chris
Almost....Love it. Best part is they did this with 100% off-the-shelf orderable parts. No custom packaging or anything. Very nice.
and lower downNotably, Kepler-47 does not use traditional Ethernet networking between the servers, eliminating the need for costly high-speed network adapters and switches. Instead, it uses Intel Thunderbolt™ 3 over a USB Type-C connector, which provides up to 20 Gb/s (or up to 40 Gb/s when utilizing display and data together!) – plenty for replicating storage and live migrating virtual machines.
To pull this off, we partnered with our friends at Intel, who furnished us with pre-release PCIe add-in-cards for Thunderbolt™ 3 and a proof-of-concept driver.
Of course, you could build the same thing using a pair of ConnectX2-EN cards and a single SFP direct-attach cable for about the same price, or many other options that don't require a switch.Finally, the Thunderbolt™ 3 controller chip in PCIe add-in-card form factor was pre-release, for development purposes only. It was graciously provided to us by our friends at Intel. They have cited a price-tag of $8.55 for the chip, but not made us pay yet.