Simple, off-the-shelf server device to install in customer on-prem

[DavidV]

Hi All,

 

I have a new business that requires us to have a device installed in our customers' networks that we can configure and control remotely.

It primarily needs to have access to the internet and local file shares, and run a VM or two for some simple services to connect to cloud services that we're building.

 

I'm a cloud native and I hate having to deal with hardware and supporting it, so I'm looking for the simplest possible push-button off-the-shelf solution that requires the minimum maintenance and support possible.

It could be running Linux or anything really, but needs a Hypervisor. That's just software though. The main issue here is hardware. I want to be able to buy "devices" that are very standard and never change (ie, so 5 years down the track I'm not supporting 5 different versions of devices each with their own idiosyncrasies).
NASs like Synology come to mind. They're actually not such a bad solution. A very simple standardised hardware set, with a simple custom OS which self-updates and as it's built for their own hardware it's unlikely to cause issues. I could use VMM on Synology to manage the VMs we need, and remote manage them with the appropriate firewall accomodations in the customer's network.

 

So Synology NAS are an option, but they're not really made for this purpose and are possibly a bit underpowered and more expensive than other mini servers available.

In an ideal world, we'd have a standard hardware device that we image with our customisations, then ship to the customer and we can remote manage it without any requirements from the customer aside from just plugging it into their network.
We could probably use something like Ngrok with a super-secure key to allow us to communicate with it without requiring port forwarding / firewall customisations.

 

Does anyone have any other suggestions other than using Synology NAS?

 

On the software side of things, obviously we could probably do whatever we want with that - running a standard Linux install for instance.
But on the remote management side of things, that's another area where I don't want to reinvent the wheel and I want to have a simple solution for putting a device in the wild, seeing when it is connected and being able to manage it remotely.
I guess what I'm looking for is essentially managed edge devices similar to IoT device platforms in terms of consumer-level simplicity and automatic connection to the internet with some sort of callback to our systems that say hi I'm here and online, manage/configure me.

 

 

To summarise requirements:

 

Hardware:

• small device - no larger than say a 2-drive NAS
• $300-$700
• Intel x64 processor
• 4-8GB of RAM
• Gigabit ethernet port, or bonus for extra options (wifi kind of undesirable and probably will disable)
• Standardised hardware that rarely changes over the course of 5-10 years

Software:

(all of these can be done by us, but would be a bonus)

• Linux flavour OS with Hypervisor
• Would be nice to have a simple GUI
• Built-in capabilities for remote management / IoT-like management

 

 

[RollinLower]

have you looked at Supermicro's tiny tower servers?

- out of band management

- tiny

- loads of hardware configs

 

https://www.supermicro.com/en/products/embedded/mini-tower

 

EDIT:

i should add these use standard ITX formfactors!

[Needfuldoer]

18 minutes ago, DavidV said:

Standardised hardware that rarely changes over the course of 5-10 years

If this is a dealbreaker, consumer devices like Synology boxes will disappoint. Their entire line gets refreshed every year or two.

 

They're at or beyond the high end of your budget, but small business servers like an HP MicroServer or a Dell PowerEdge R250 would do what you need.

[Ralphred]

3 hours ago, Needfuldoer said:

but small business servers like an HP MicroServer or a Dell PowerEdge R250 would do what you need.

Even these will have differing hardware over a 5 year purchase period , that wouldn't stop you making a custom OS to put on them at build time that presents, to the non-initiated, the same though.

[DavidV]

21 hours ago, Needfuldoer said:

If this is a dealbreaker, consumer devices like Synology boxes will disappoint. Their entire line gets refreshed every year or two.

 

They're at or beyond the high end of your budget, but small business servers like an HP MicroServer or a Dell PowerEdge R250 would do what you need.

The fact that Synology makes the software kind of mitigates the requirements there as the hardware only has incremental changes and they are supported by Synology's DSM. The main issue here is dealing with supporting hardware idiosyncrasies, but Synology does a good job of that already and is really good with updates.

I'm starting to gravitate towards Intel NUCs though.
The form factor is more suitable than many of the other options, and I'm starting to resign to the fact that I'm probably going to have to customise software to do exactly what I want it to do.
I may end up using an enterprise device management platform.. I just haven't done this before so have a lot of research to do.
For the most part, I just need to have a bit of software that I've built sitting on the devices which exposes a secure configuration API.

The Intel NUC form factor seems to be pretty consistent over the years, which will be useful if we want to do custom branding on the cases, and their wide usage satisfies our reliability and support requirements.

[DavidV]

21 hours ago, RollinLower said:

have you looked at Supermicro's tiny tower servers?

Thanks. I've used Supermicro servers back in the days before AWS.. bigger 4RU units with 3 power supplies etc to run high traffic ecommerce operations.

I didn't realise they had mini servers like this.. checking them out.

They're slightly above my original price range, but I've since realised I need higher specs than I anticipated. I need at least 32GB and 4+cores for the primary application, so I'm adjusting my price expectations.

[DavidV]

18 hours ago, Ralphred said:

Even these will have differing hardware over a 5 year purchase period , that wouldn't stop you making a custom OS to put on them at build time that presents, to the non-initiated, the same though.

Yeah, which is why I was considering Synology. The DSM already basically does that. Even though they refresh their line fairly regularly, it's incremental upgrades and DSM handles all the accomodations.
Having a standardised supported environment where I can essentially just install my own "Package" and manages updates is ideal.

Going further, I'd love if a vendor that had a device that called back to base on initial internet connection and we could just have an automated system where we could "claim" the device, tell it what to install and then continue to manage it this way without ever touching it or even needing to remote in directly to that device.
I think the enterprise device management platforms kind of do this, but possibly not quite to the extent I'd like, and may be too expensive as they're designed for managing workstations etc with traditionally high support costs. I still need to research this more.

[Ralphred]

3 hours ago, DavidV said:

Having a standardised supported environment where I can essentially just install my own "Package" and manages updates is ideal.

I think what this is going to boil down to is the volume of devices you are going to want supplied, and the size of the vendor you use to supply then. If you can match these two so that your business is an attractive enough proposition for them to want to ship stuff with "Your config/OS" installed then you're home and dry, unless this "phone home for configuration" idea is already implemented somewhere, in which case it's a no brainer.