Thursday, January 22, 2009
Netbook-as-server?
Something I've been carrying on about lately, and hopefully a topic that'll be on my podcast tomorrow night, is the possibility of using a netbook as a personal mobile server. It's clear that these online appliances are meant from a consumer standpoint to be able to easily access services in the cloud, but how well would they hold up on the other side of the argument?
I'm not expecting such a machine to be an enterprise-caliber, scalable system supporting thousands of users accessing complex applications - but more a portable solution for small communities needing access over HTTP, FTP, SMTP or XMPP; or other specialized uses like being a proxy cache to larger back-end resources.
Today I thought aloud about the realism of loading a $300 netbook of decent specs (1.8Ghz microprocessor, 2GB RAM, 60GB HDD) with the desktop version of Ubuntu Linux, and hooking it up to solid broadband connectivity via WiFi. I'd then configure DNS, implement the LAMP stack and install/tweak Squid, Openfire, vsftp and sendmail, write a few administrative shell scripts, set up some cron jobs, start the daemons and let the system sit, listen and work. The beauty would be the ability to take it out in the field (factoring in the potential quirky connectivity due to constant jumping in and out of wireless hotspots and outright downtime caused by severed connectivity in dead areas).
Surely it'll be functional...people do it all the time with desktop PCs. But how well and to what extent? Think about some of the scenarios from a performance POV:
- Even with good Internet access, would the meager hardware capabilities of such a computer be able to handle a small surge of users making rampant requests for web data? Or, could it even handle a couple of simultaneous resources pulling down large files?
- Could such commodity specs adequately run a web framework like Django or Ruby on Rails?
- Can it sufficiently handle a load of AJAX pollers, RSS readers and other aggregation apps constantly banging on it, checking for new stuff?
- Could the long-lived resources spooled by the back-and-forth of ongoing IM conversations and chatrooms survive on such architecture?
Sounds like a decent enough weekend project. And inexpensive and fun at that! Thoughts?
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