Thoughts on the Antsle?

[ultimatebob]

Hey Guys,

What do you server guys think about this thing?

https://antsle.com/shop/

It's a small form factor server with an 8 core processor, 16 GB of ECC memory, and 500 GB of SSD storage for $1,249. That seems a bit expensive for those hardware specs, but the "private cloud" VM software looks pretty cool. I'm curious how the Windows licensing would work on something like that, though.

I could probably get more "bang for the buck" running a Dell PowerEdge with VMWare ESXi, but it wouldn't look nearly as cool sitting on my desk.

 

[XavierMace]

LOL @ their claim of running 100 VM's on an Avoton C2750. Maybe 100 VM's running DOS. That's obscenely expensive for those specs. They're trying to sell it as a server without any features you'd want in a server No redundant power, no hot swap drive bays, only two actual drive bays total.

It's a wildly overpriced HTPC basically.

 

[ultimatebob]

I think that they're really talking about 100 containers in their example, and not VM's. But yeah, you're not going to pull that off in real life without multiple Xeon class processors.

I certainly wouldn't use this for anything more than a light production workload, but it might make for a fun developer toy.

And, hey... I would totally buy one if they had a 50% off sale

 

[XavierMace]

Yeah, half off would make the price more reasonable but IMO it's still a solution looking for a problem.

They're pitching it as a great living room server and it's primary draw is it's passively cooled. The only people I know with "servers" in their living room are running straight file/media servers. There's no mention of their proprietary OS supporting any of the common media streaming apps natively which means you'd have to run your media server in a VM. Which means either running a second purpose built OS just for your media server or running a full blown OS at which point you're probably going to be feeling the lack of a big core processor. Plus with only two drive bays (which require disassembly to access), it's ill suited to be a file/media server.

If you're wanting a straight lab or dev box (the category I fall into personally), the lack of drive bays might work for you, but you're going to be unhappy with the small core performance. Most of the BYO firewall software (pfSense, Sophos UTM, etc) start getting pretty clock speed hungry once you start enabling features if you want a good throughput. Any sort of rendering/encoding/number crunching is going to suck on that processor. At half the price it would make an interesting toy, but at it's current price you could easily build a faster, more accessibly, but still silent box for cheaper.

 

[ultimatebob]

I wasn't really thinking about using it as a living room file server, although I guess that you could use it for that. That Antman VM software would just be wasted overhead, though.

I was thinking more along the lines of a cubicle top development server that you use the spawn VM's for web/app servers or database servers. They seem to be pitching it as an alternative to AWS for Development and Test workloads, and I think that it would work for that.

It still needs a faster CPU and a $500 price cut, though.

 

[XavierMace]

But you generally want Dev servers that somewhat reflect your production environment. You've got underpowered hardware running an unknown OS. You're not going to get a reliable idea how an application would run in production as the hardware is vastly different and I wouldn't want to depend on unknown software for business usage, even just dev. Given you're going to have to virtualize everything, it's useless as a dev workstation. Plus what happens when you're ready to move your dev VM into production? Can the VM's be exported in any standard format?

And pitching it as an alternative to AWS is silly as there's no redundancy, no scalability, and it's still in-house. Plus the extremely limited storage. Like I said, IMO, it's solving a problem that doesn't exist, regardless of price. The price just makes it sillier.

 

[ultimatebob]

I hear what you're saying, but that Antman software is using KVM virtualization under the covers so it's a pretty similar virtualization solution to what you would see in AWS. It also seems to be using standard issue OS images, so I'd think that what you develop on it could be pushed to the cloud without issue.

And, yeah, the VM performance on this box would be crap for any resource intensive software. That said, the performance of a small AWS instance like a t2.micro or t2.small is crap as well if you try to use that for development. Trust me, I've tried.

If I was going to get one of these (again, it would have to be a $500 off fire sale), I'd use the Antsle as a dev sandbox/prototype and then build "real" hardware in AWS as the QA testing platform before moving it to production. That's a pretty isolated use case, though. That might explain why they're using super targeted Facebook ads to get me to buy one

 

[Chiropteran]

Even if the performance is fine, I'd be a little worried about the avoton CPU's longevity.

https://community.spiceworks.com/topic/1963063-that-s-why-its-broken-intel-c2000-series-chips-faulty

Unless these use a "fixed" later revision of the CPU somehow?

Better to just build a uATX server yourself with a 6 core Ryzen, IMO.

 

[ultimatebob]

Even if the performance is fine, I'd be a little worried about the avoton CPU's longevity.

https://community.spiceworks.com/topic/1963063-that-s-why-its-broken-intel-c2000-series-chips-faulty

Unless these use a "fixed" later revision of the CPU somehow?

Better to just build a uATX server yourself with a 6 core Ryzen, IMO.

Heh, something tells me that fanless aluminum case would become a full blown fire hazard if they put a Ryzen processor in there. You wouldn't have to buy the red one... the whole case would glow red on it's own

I wonder if a Core i7 mobile part would work better in that box? Less physical cores, but you could still get 8 threads with hyperthreading and they would have a faster clock speed with only a marginally higher TDP.

 

[aigomorla]

• up to 16 TB Internal Storage (raw capacity)
• SSD-based (Samsung Evo 850) – SSD add-on available

someone care to explain to me how one intends to put 16TB of SSD's in that tiny box?

 

[XavierMace]

The 16TB is accounting for using the 2x 3.5" bays.

 

[aigomorla]

The 16TB is accounting for using the 2x 3.5" bays.

Where are those bays?
I don't see them outside the 2.5inch.

infact 3.5inch would account for 40% of the space inside that box.

I dont think the thickness would allow 4 x 2.5 SSD's.

10.75 x 9.625 x 2.875 in

 

[XavierMace]

I had the same thought, but....

Upgrades

RAM Upgrade 1: 32 GB ECC RAM (4 * 8 GB, instead of 2 * 8 GB)
Storage Upgrade 1: 2 * 1 TB SSD, raw capacity 2 TB (instead of 2 * 500 GB)
Storage Upgrade 2: 2 * 2 TB SSD, raw capacity 4 TB (instead of 2 * 500 GB)
Storage Addition: 2 * 2 TB HDD, raw capacity 4 TB (in addition to the SSDs, adds minimal noise)

So I'm assuming they sit right above the mobo and they're using LP ram.

 

[aigomorla]

I had the same thought, but....



So I'm assuming they sit right above the mobo and they're using LP ram.

wouldnt work unless u want that cpu to be toasted.

seems like the cpu heatsink extends to the top of the case to make use of the shell.

 

[XavierMace]

Yeah, I got nothing then.

 

[Chiropteran]

Notice the wording. Instead of "storage upgrade", it's "storage addition". Maybe it's some external box with storage if you take that option.

 

[ultimatebob]

Notice the wording. Instead of "storage upgrade", it's "storage addition". Maybe it's some external box with storage if you take that option.

Yeah, it has USB 3 ports for additional storage expansion. It's kinda lame that they don't show pictures of that configuration, though.

 

[XavierMace]

I could have sworn one of their pages said it was internal.