[densh]

For anyone interested in playing with distributed systems, I'd really recommend getting a single machine with latest 16-core CPU from AMD and just running 8 virtual machines on it. 8 virtual machines, with 4 hyper threads pinned per machine, and 1/8 of total RAM per machine. Create a network between them virtually within your virtualization software of choice (such as Proxmox).

And suddenly you can start playing with distributed software, even though it's running on a single machine. For resiliency tests you can unplug one machine at a time with a single click. It will annihilate a Pi cluster in Perf/W as well, and you don't have to assemble a complex web of components to make it work. Just a single CPU, motherboard, m.2 SSD, and two sticks of RAM.

Naturally, using a high core count machine without virtualization will get you best overall Perf/W in most benchmarks. What's also important but often not highlighted in benchmarks in Idle W if you'd like to keep your cluster running, and only use it occasionally.

[globular-toast]

I've been saying this for years. When the last Raspberry Pi shortage happened people were scrambling to get them for building these toy clusters and it's such a shame. The Pi was made for paedogogy but I feel like most of them are wasted.

I run a K8s "cluster" on a single xcp-ng instance, but you don't even really have to go that far. Docker Machine could easily spin up docker hosts with a single command, but I see that project is dead now. Docker Swarm I think still lets you scale up/down services, no hypervisor required.

[motorest]

> I've been saying this for years. When the last Raspberry Pi shortage happened people were scrambling to get them for building these toy clusters and it's such a shame. The Pi was made for paedogogy but I feel like most of them are wasted.

You're describing people using RPis to learn distributed systems, and you conclude that these RPis are wasted because RPis were made for paedogogy?

> I run a K8s "cluster" on a single xcp-ng instance, but you don't even really have to go that far.

That's perfectly fine. You do what works for you, just like everyone else. How would you handle someone else accusing your computer resourcss of being wasted?

[qmr]

No need for so much CPU power, any old quad core would work.

[subscribed]

Old quad core won't have all the virtualisation extensions.

[anaganisk]

Aren’t newer CPUs especially AMDs more energy efficient?

[malux85]

Yeah this is how I practiced Postgres hot standby and read replicas,

It was also how I learned to setup a Hadoop cluster, and a Cassandra cluster (this was 10 years ago when these technologies were hot)

Having knowledge of these systems and being able to talk about how I set them up and simulated recovery directly got me jobs that 2x and then 3x my salary, I would highly recommend all medium skilled developers setup systems like this and get practicing if you want to get up into the next level

[cyberpunk]

Honestly why do you need so much cpu power? You can play with distributed systems just by installing Erlang and running a couple of nodes on whatever potato-level linux box you have laying around, including a single raspberry pi.

[bee_rider]

Tangentially related: I really expected running old MPI programs on stuff like the AMD multi-chip workstation packages to become a bigger thing.

[le-mark]

I actually worked with some MPI code way back. What MPI programs are you referring to?

[user432678]

Yes, but this is boring. Saying this as an owner of home server with ProxMox.