perfSONAR User Q&A and Other Discussion

[Brian Candler <>]

There are some low-cost nodes listed at 
https://github.com/perfsonar/project/wiki/Low-Cost-perfSONAR-Nodes

and a mention of the Intel NUC (but no specific model) at 
https://www.perfsonar.net/deploy/hardware-selection/low-cost-hardware/

I have one to add into the mix, which is the Intel NUC DN2820FYKH. I 
have just bought 7 of these for a project at a client.

They are remarkably cheap: we paid £88+VAT (on amazon.com they are 
$140). On top of this you need a DDR3L SO-DIMM (I bought the maximum 8GB 
at £24, although 4GB would have been £13). Finally you need any 2.5" 
SATA HDD or SSD, of which we had a bunch lying around anyway.

I upgraded the BIOS to the latest currently available (0052). In the 
BIOS settings I set "Dynamic Power Technology" to "Off" to minimise 
jitter, and "After Power Failure" to "Power On".  After that it was just 
a stock PS toolkit install from USB.

These boxes have a dual-core processor at 2.17GHz. Spec says DN2820, but 
/proc/cpuinfo says DN2830. It even supports VT-x virtualization.

Performance-wise, they happily fill a gigabit: using a direct connection 
between two NUCs, iperf3 gave 942Mbps (which is the theoretical maximum, 
once you take into account IP and ethernet headers). At the sending 
side, top shows about 38% CPU used by iperf3, and 76% idle. At the 
receiving side, this falls to 26% for iperf3 and 90% idle.

So I think this makes a great node.

Pros:
* standard Intel hardware and perfsonar install
* very compact
* easy to open
* takes standard 2.5" drive
* plugs supplied for UK, US, Europe and Australia
* wifi included, should you wish to test network performance over wifi

Cons:
* not rackmount; separate wall wart; does not plug into IEC power strip
* if you disconnect the HDMI cable, the screen remains blank when you 
plug it back in (I had to ssh in and reboot). Maybe there's a fix for this.
* it has been around for a couple of years, and could be withdrawn at 
any time

It is still shown at 
http://www.intel.co.uk/content/www/uk/en/nuc/products-overview.html
but not at http://www.intel.co.uk/content/www/uk/en/nuc/nuc-comparison.html
(even if you click on the "Show more" link at the bottom)

Should this go away, the Gigabyte Brix GB-BXBT-2807 looks comparable: 
Celeron N2807, 1.58GHz. It's even slightly cheaper.

Intel has a couple of other low-end NUCs as well which I have not tried. 
They look to be less powerful, but might still be capable of filling a 
gigabit.

DCCP847DYE - Celeron 847 processor, dual core, 1.1GHz, max 16GB RAM. 
Needs a mini-PCIe SSD?
http://www.intel.co.uk/content/www/uk/en/nuc/nuc-kit-dccp847dye-board-dcp847ske.html
http://ark.intel.com/products/56056/Intel-Celeron-Processor-847-2M-Cache-1_10-GHz

DE3815TYKHE - Atom E3815 processor, single core, 1.46GHz
http://ark.intel.com/products/78577/Intel-NUC-Kit-DE3815TYKHE
http://ark.intel.com/products/78476/Intel-Atom-Processor-E3815-512K-Cache-1_46-GHz

Regards,

Brian Candler.