[coreboot] RFC: reliable XEN-Server project with Core-Boot. Which Mainboard to use
Ludwig Jaffe
luja at openhardware.de
Thu May 14 10:44:39 CEST 2009
Hi there,
as coreboot gives us the possibility to fully control a board's boot
process, I would like to suggest to make a small end-user project.
As I do want to build some web and application servers using xen. I
think about joining forces and build a reference-implementation for that.
So anyone then can buy a quite cheap an available mainboard, that
supports coreboot and a XEN-Kernel with some small userland (sshd,
mgetty (modem-access), busybox, xen-tools).
The reason for this is that people can build cheap servers to put them
into colocation without the need of expensive remote-console-interfaces
or remote-hands service and the like.
The Server just boots coreboot and then the xen-kernel with the
essential tools. So if anything goes wrong (Misconfigured Xen-clients,
hdd-failures, Network, other pain which does not affect cpu+chipset)
the box will be able to be put to life again from remote.
Within coreboot, using a 8MByte Bios we should have enough space for the
userland.
Now the question is, which board/chipset would you choose? There some
serverboards supported in coreboot which are now end-of life, and there
are consumerboards which may be good for the task.
As I think, that this xen-server sould be a 1u (max 2u) server, a small
board with low peripheral count (4x sata for kernel-raid5), 2
PCI-express-slots for extensions, chipset-graphics, internal serial port
for modem etc. should suffice.
Any suggestions/ideas?
Thanks for reading all the best
LuJa
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