Talos II Lite
This got me sufficiently interested I started poking around and looking at pricing (&quot;Add to cart&quot;) of all the different systems available.<p>There are actually a few. In decreasing order of price:<p>- Both the 2U and 4U rackmount servers are $5,475 (4U: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;secure.raptorcs.com&#x2F;content&#x2F;TL2SV2&#x2F;purchase.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;secure.raptorcs.com&#x2F;content&#x2F;TL2SV2&#x2F;purchase.html</a>, 2U: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;secure.raptorcs.com&#x2F;content&#x2F;TL2SV1&#x2F;purchase.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;secure.raptorcs.com&#x2F;content&#x2F;TL2SV1&#x2F;purchase.html</a>). The only difference is 2 versus 3 SAS HBAs, 16 vs 24 drive bays, and 720W vs 1200W redundant PSUs, respectively. (The webpages are really easy to visually diff! I&#x27;ll bet they did that on purpose.) Both come with two 18-core POWER9s, and 64GB RAM.<p>- The flagship Secure Workstation comes in next at $4,925 (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;secure.raptorcs.com&#x2F;content&#x2F;TL2WK2&#x2F;purchase.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;secure.raptorcs.com&#x2F;content&#x2F;TL2WK2&#x2F;purchase.html</a>). This ships with two 4-core POWER9s and 32GB.<p>- The &quot;Desktop Development System&quot; follows close behind at $4,375, and has one 4-core POWER9 and 16GB.<p>- There are also various motherboard-only options; the base option (no CPUs, no RAM) comes in at $2,325.<p>- Finally, the listed system comes in at $1,399. That&#x27;s impressive.<p>The big caveat is that this price is motherboard-ONLY. Apparently you get an enclosure, but no CPU, and no RAM.<p>- A 4-core CPU is $375, (= $1,774)<p>- 8-core is $595, (= $1,994)<p>- 18-core is $1,375, (= just get a Talos II?)<p>- 22-core is $2,575. (= <i>definitely</i> just get a Talos II. And get two CPUs (= $5,510).)<p>As for RAM, the board uses DDR4; I do not know enough to say if it &quot;must&quot; be ECC. I&#x27;ll assume it does (I vaguely recall reading somewhere that using the wrong kind of RAM (even if it will fit in the socket) can fry things sometimes, don&#x27;t know if it applies here). Talos doesn&#x27;t SKU discrete RAM, so there&#x27;s that as well. (32GB seems to float at around US$250-$300 or so; Google&#x27;s giving me AUD$550-$600, AU pricing is always all kinds of crazy.)<p>The final catch (noted in the footnotes at the bottom) is that the Talos II Lite cannot be upgraded to dual CPUs. Huh!<p>The Users&#x27; Guide linked on the product info page is for a &quot;T2P9D01&quot; motherboard (using a direct link, but I found the info page for the PDF at <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;wiki.raptorcs.com&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;File:T2P9D01_users_guide_version_1_0.pdf" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;wiki.raptorcs.com&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;File:T2P9D01_users_guide_vers...</a>). The oldest version of this file is from 16 April - so it&#x27;s fairly new - however page 1 of the PDF shows a motherboard with 2 CPU sockets.<p>If &quot;cannot&quot; is truly literal (and it seems so - I can&#x27;t see Raptor Engineering ever using a &quot;buy an unlock code to enable socket 2&quot; approach), well, hopefully they&#x27;re just using existing boards but not soldering in a bunch of components. (Just because wasting the electronics would be sad, no other reason.)<p>Maybe someone knows more about this new board (? &#x2F; configuration).<p>---<p>I <i>cannot</i> do a comment like this without...<p>- Talos™ II Secure Workstation<p>- 2x 22-core POWER9 CPU<p>- &quot;Second POWER9 Processor with HSF&quot; - I have no idea what this does but it sounds very useful<p>- 128GB ECC DDR4<p>- 500GB NVMe<p>Total: $13,825<p>:D<p>---<p>A datacenter should start stocking this hardware and making it publicly available.<p>Because <i>all models of the POWER9 have hardware virtualization. Making a fleet of POWER9 KVM VPS blades is totally feasible by just buying these systems.</i> (I say that because I&#x27;m not aware of anywhere else you can get a POWER9 box - and a secure one, what&#x27;s more.)<p>So, I&#x27;m wondering... if someone went and...<p>- Talos™ II 4U Rack Mount Server<p>- 2x 22-core POWER9 CPU<p>- The 2nd-processor HSF thingy<p>- 1TB RAM<p>- 500GB NVMe<p>Total: $23,475<p>...how many VMs would they be able to viably run per host&#x2F;node? On 1TB of RAM. Envisaging a, uh, <i>economically-optimized</i> &quot;high RAM, low CPU&quot; scenario where the hosts are packed kinda tight.<p>FWIW, Contabo offers a configuration a bit like that (of course on x86), where you can get 6GB of RAM for like ~$10&#x2F;mo. Compiling Chrome took over 10 hours, but pretty much everything else I threw at it back when I had it didn&#x27;t choke that badly.<p>POWER9 VPS offerings have come and gone. It&#x27;d be nice (and fun) for someone independent to offer a small number of nodes.<p>---<p>I just discovered that Raptor seems to offer <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;integricloud.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;integricloud.com&#x2F;</a>. Seems kinda interesting; reading <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;integricloud.com&#x2F;content&#x2F;base&#x2F;faq.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;integricloud.com&#x2F;content&#x2F;base&#x2F;faq.html</a>, it&#x27;s obvious they have the right idea about security.<p>I&#x27;m a bit perplexed at the red text at <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;integricloud.com&#x2F;content&#x2F;base&#x2F;software.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;integricloud.com&#x2F;content&#x2F;base&#x2F;software.html</a>:<p>&gt; <i>NOTE: The source packages required to build reproducible versions of our node firmware and software stack are only available to active users of the IntegriCloud™ platform, auditors for active users of the IntegriCloud™ platform, and security researchers.</i><p>Security through obscurity much? :&#x2F;<p>I don&#x27;t quite understand the rationale here.