Operating systems and other software

Software support is an absolute necessity for any server technology. Without the appropriate operating systems, resource management, security, and enterprise applications, next-generation microservers are nothing more than doorstops. Servers based on Intel’s Atom chips can run Linux, Windows and a variety of other operating systems and have no issues providing the necessary operating systems and software infrastructure for Big Data.

To date, only versions of Linux are available for the Calxeda ECX-1000 and other ARM-based microserver systems, notably Ubuntu, from Canonical, and Fedora, from Red Hat. Fortunately for Big Data, that’s not a problem: the vast majority of Big Data solutions were designed for Linux, largely due to its origins in the open-source community rather than the R&D groups of IBM, Microsoft or Oracle. With reasonable Java support from Oracle and the open-source community, the deployment of Hadoop, MongoDB, Cassandra, and other Big Data application stacks is possible.

“Microservers show great promise for leading cost performance on Big Data platforms, where the CPU is balanced with local commodity storage and network infrastructure commonly used in Big Data,” said Karl Freund, Calxeda’s VP of marketing. However, getting a build of a Big Data stack optimized for an ARM-based microserver is another story: many of the open-source projects that created the Big Data application stacks in use today were originally developed with large collections of commodity x86-based servers in the last decade or so, resulting in software architectures designed around the characteristics of the servers. 

Microservers deployed with ARM-based SoCs have very different architectures and characteristics, ones that weren’t expected or anticipated by the designers of the Big Data applications that are popular now. In many cases these applications need to be modified to play to the strengths of each microserver architecture while minimizing the impact of the architecture’s weaknesses compared to traditional x86 technologies.

Advantages and disadvantages of microservers for Big Data

The major advantages of microservers include:

• vastly reduced power requirements (currently up to 90 percent less than traditional servers);
• significantly reduced space requirements (at least 50 percent less);
• integrated, high-speed network fabrics for interserver communications;
• reduced dependency on external switches and extensive cabling;
• higher reliability due to fewer components;
• less heat generated during operation, reducing A/C requirements;
• Linux and Java compatibility with existing enterprise software stacks.

The major disadvantages include:

• a lack of available enterprise software;
• slower clock rates, typically below 2 GHz;
• reduced main-memory capacity, typically under four gigabytes (GB) per core;
• a lack of 64-bit ARMv8 CPUs within currently available SoC designs;
• limited available expertise in microserver planning, deployment and management;
• a limited number of vendors providing microserver systems.

The disadvantages are, in general, short-term issues that are currently being remedied by the industry. Companies such as Suvola and Inktank are addressing the need for enterprise software. Clock rates will likely double in the next year or two. And CPUs capable of 64-bit addressing and larger memory will be available by 2014. As successful deployments of microservers occur over the next several years, a large, vibrant ecosystem of vendors and experts in the field will emerge.

Key challenges for enterprises adopting microservers

Enterprises that are intending on adopting microserver technology in the near future will likely find that the lack of ported and tuned enterprise software is the most significant barrier to rapid adoption. Of course, the ones that develop a significant portion of their own software should be able to port their code to ARM-based microservers. 

The key question then becomes expense versus benefits. In some cases porting challenges will favor enterprises that wait until 2014, when 64-bit ARM-based microservers will be more readily available. As previously mentioned, another challenge is the limited vendor support and overall limited amount of available expertise in the emerging microserver technologies.