Up2 cluster? cases and form factor

Jan

I am new to UP squared but was thinking that these board could be used for a mini Kubernetes cluster.

what is the form factor of these boards? they do not seemt to comply to any standard?

are there any cases available for the board+ 1 2,5" SSD, preferably in a stackable configuration?

has anyone built anything similar?

Regards

Jan

Aling

Hi,

UP Squared has its proprietary form factor, and it doesn't comply with other known industrial standard.
At this moment we don't have a plan to make a chassis to accommodate 2.5" SSD.
We just shared the 3D drawing of UP Squared metal chassis in UP shop product page, maybe you can modify and have 3D printing. :-)

Jan

Searching the shop product page I found nothing, in the wiki I found a link to a rar-file that required me to install an open source rar archive software on my mac, in that file there was a stp-file, I have no idea what an stp-file is.

I spent 10 minutes trying to find software to look at the stp-file om my mac without luck.

It seems clear to me that the target audience for this product is people who like filing their own backplates or like 3d printing, I tinker with software and actually value a nice metal case so I am probably better off buying a stack of mini-itx N4200 servers.

had I been inclined to metal working I would have made a mini-itx tray and backplate with two of these boards each, stuck it in a slim mini-iTX case with 2x2,5" disk and had a real compact solution, a stack of 10 boards would only have required 30x20x22cm, which would have made a pretty cool desktop lab with 80GB of ram.

Still, looks like a real nice and compact board, I will definitely check back on UP in the future.

Michael Miller

These are classed as "makerboards" much like the raspberry pi. In fact, UP board shares the basic layout of the pi and the UP Squared is just the long dimension of the UP/pi in both x and y. I have a pretty high quality sketchup file at home that i made by a combination of converting the stp file and some of my own work. I can upload it when I get home. Sketchup is free software that is fairly easy to use.

Jan

I am quite familiar with raspberry pi's, have lots of them at home and office, but there is no shortage of suitable cases available for them.
( to be fair the case available from UP is not suitable in my opinion as my use of SBC's this powerful would also require the addition of 2,5" SSD's or spinning hard drive).

I am not sure what the definition of "makerboard" is, is it just a embedded computer board?, I use a lot of them, from ESP8266 to arduinos and pi's. with the exception of ESP's all others were bought with cases for ease of handling and protection.

I appreciate your offer, I have no interrest in 3D printing myself, but if suitable designs for my intended use were available I could always have them produced.

eduncan911

So I will be building a cluster shortly of UP^2 and UP Boards (docker swarm testing). I have several of these UP^2 and UP Boards. My primary reason for choosing UP was because of a full Intel CPU opposed to the limited ARM CPU in the RPi for docker clusters (most docker images aren't not available for ARM CPUs).

Note: these boards all have onboard storage. You don't need an external drive like you do with RPis (or sdcards).

UP Boards are stackable with standard RPi kits, for the most part (they are a tiny bit higher because of the RTC battery mounted on top of the NIC connector - and removing the lower cooling plate which really isn't needed).

As you are aware, most Raspberry cluster cases are sized "larger" than the RPi themselves. The UP Board tends to just "sit" on one of the shelves, just like the RPis.

I don't plan on paying for a cluster chassis. Too much $$$ IMO. And if you are willing to pay $$$ for a cluster chassis, then you can afford for someone to 3D print you a stack from a modified 3D print file. I've printed a RPi cluster on the cheap before for around $55 in total parts on 3DHub. That beat anything i found online.

My plan for the UP^2 though is a little different. I plan on stacking them on the cheap with raised legs.

However, the UP^2 boards will take a bit of modification. Here are my current thoughts as to stacking eight of them.

* remove and the passive heatsink (mounted on the bottom of the UP^2).
* drill out the four mounting holes. These are standard RPi size holes specs.
* assemble using high stand-offs.

The UP^2's heatsink spreads over the entire bottom of the board. Simply drilling out the areas to mount my own legs seems the easiest thing I can do. Worse case, I'll just design a shelf in 3D and have someone print it up. Should be pretty cheap, maybe around $60 total for an 8 cluster setup.

Some ideas of doing it on the cheap:



And I've even seen chassis like this, that use the same RPi hole arrangement:



The above images use the RPi hole arrangement, which is compatible with the UP Board and UP^2 devices. Though with the UP^2, the heatsink will need to be modified. I'm fine with that.

If it is Disk I/O you are after and the onboard eMMC 5.0 (up to 400 MB/s) isn't fast enough, the SATA3 (6Gbps) port only goes to 580 MB/s. I haven't tested the actual disk I/O of the memory chips on the eMMC drive. I'll try to find some time for that.

eduncan911

Are you married to the UP^2?

The UP Boards follow the RPi mounting format. So any standard form factor cluster should work (make sure there is enough height clearance).

Another cluster idea would be for the UP Cores, since they are extremely small and compact (smaller and shorter than a RPi).