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Ask Slashdot: Tiny PCs To Drive Dozens of NOC Monitors?
mushero writes: We are building out a new NOC with dozens of LCD monitors and need ideas for what PCs to use to drive all those monitors. What is small and easy to stack, rack, power, manage, replace, etc.?
The room is 8m x 8m. It has a central 3x3 LCD array, as well as mixed-size and -orientation LCD monitors on the front and side walls (plus scrolling LEDs, custom desks, team tables, etc) — it's designed as a small version of the famous AT&T Ops Center. We are an MSP and this is a tour showcase center, so more is better — most have real functions for our monitor teams, DBAs, SoC, alert teams, and so on, 7x24. We'll post pics when it's done.
But what's the best way to drive all this visual stuff? The simplest approach for basic/tiny PCs is to use 35-50 of these — how do we do that effectively? Almost all visuals are browser-only, so any PC can run them (a couple will use Apple TV or Cable feeds for news). The walls are modular and 50cm thick, and we'll have a 19" rack or two, so we have room, and all professional wiring/help as needed.
Raspberry Pis are powerful enough for this, but painful to mount and wire. Chromeboxes are great and the leading candidate, as the ASUS units can drive two monitors. The Intel NUC can also do this — those and the Chromeboxes are easily stackable. My dream would be a quad-HDMI device in Chromebox form factor. Or are there special high-density PCs for this with 4-8-16 HDMI outputs?
Each unit will be hard-wired to its monitor, and via ip-KVM (need recommendations on that, too, 32+ port) for controls. Any other ideas for a cool NOC are also appreciated, as we have money and motivation to do anything that helps the team and the tours.
The room is 8m x 8m. It has a central 3x3 LCD array, as well as mixed-size and -orientation LCD monitors on the front and side walls (plus scrolling LEDs, custom desks, team tables, etc) — it's designed as a small version of the famous AT&T Ops Center. We are an MSP and this is a tour showcase center, so more is better — most have real functions for our monitor teams, DBAs, SoC, alert teams, and so on, 7x24. We'll post pics when it's done.
But what's the best way to drive all this visual stuff? The simplest approach for basic/tiny PCs is to use 35-50 of these — how do we do that effectively? Almost all visuals are browser-only, so any PC can run them (a couple will use Apple TV or Cable feeds for news). The walls are modular and 50cm thick, and we'll have a 19" rack or two, so we have room, and all professional wiring/help as needed.
Raspberry Pis are powerful enough for this, but painful to mount and wire. Chromeboxes are great and the leading candidate, as the ASUS units can drive two monitors. The Intel NUC can also do this — those and the Chromeboxes are easily stackable. My dream would be a quad-HDMI device in Chromebox form factor. Or are there special high-density PCs for this with 4-8-16 HDMI outputs?
Each unit will be hard-wired to its monitor, and via ip-KVM (need recommendations on that, too, 32+ port) for controls. Any other ideas for a cool NOC are also appreciated, as we have money and motivation to do anything that helps the team and the tours.
http://www.displayport.org/cables/driving-multiple-displays-from-a-single-displayport-output/
Anyone using a Pi gets a rude awakening when they hit an existing limit to the platform and burn through time trying to get around it.
And now it's time for your rude awakening.
The graphics are marginal for anything not covered by the existing MPEG codecs, so any kind of browser plug-in based animations and graphics are likely to be a painful experience,
And here it is: You have no idea what you're talking about. The codecs are irrelevant because none of that kind of functionality utilizes video. All of that stuff is software-generated and video codecs don't come into play at all. The modern Raspberry Pi has plenty of CPU for doing javascript-churned animations. The GPU is the best part of the whole thing, arguably.
not to mention the fact that their
"there"
is no CPU / GPU room for future proofing should someone bring in a "killer app" without support today for their purposes.
Their current primary contender is a NUC driving two displays. There's no CPU/GPU room for future proofing in that scenario, either, and one machine has two handle two browsers. They explicitly state that the Pis will handle their needs today. If they want to upgrade to something bigger and shinier later, it will probably have hardware requirements in excess of whatever crappy little machines they specify now no matter what they are, so they should go for whatever is cheapest and uses the least power.
So you don't go into using the Pi with plans to upgrade your software later. You use the Pi (or an odroid, or whatever, who cares) because it's small and cheap and quiet and meets your needs. When they don't, you have an intern put them on eBay.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I would stay away from Wifi for anything that is actually in important continual use, or is intended to impress people on tours. I've seen way too many kiosks and displays that don't work or have error messages because of software and connection problems, and it looks rather bad and unprofessional. You can get Wifi to be pretty reliable, but it is easy enough to use a wired and avoid the chance of it going down when you most need it.
Uhh, anybody using a "Wireless Router" in an enterprise environment needs to be kicked in the teeth.
Also, don't use wireless for anything mission-critical. Monitoring systems are critical imho.
NVS isn't a "high-end graphics" card, it's specifically designed for driving lots of low-end displays such as in digital signage or systems monitoring. Yes, it's ~$700 for the new card and if you want to dick about with configuring, cabling and managing 16+ Pi's then you're quite welcome to, but if you want something straightforward for a showcase center then it's well worth looking at.