Building a Datacenter with ARM Devices

Abstract

The ARM CPU is becoming more prevalent as devices are shrinking and become embedded in everything from medical devices to toasters. However, Linux for ARM is still in the very early stages of release, with many different issues, challenges, and shortcomings.

In order to test what level of service commodity ARM devices have, I decided to build a small datacenter with these devices. This included building services usually found in large businesses, such as LDAP, DNS, Mail, and certain web applications such as Roundcube webmail, ownCloud storage, and Drupal content management.