I am considering building a development machine for building images, and Debian packages (deb).  I do not plan a GUI on it. I plan to ssh in. I would like to be able to mirror a couple of SATA drives for safety. Speed and connectivity are important.

Can anyone make a suggestion on what board. Must run Armbian of course.

 

Thanks, Steve

50 minutes ago, N4IRS said:

Must run Armbian of course.

 

Since Armbian only runs on ARM devices while it can only be built on x64 that requirement is impossible

 

https://docs.armbian.com/Developer-Guide_Build-Preparation/#what-do-i-need

 

Many cores/threads help with compilation, fast storage [1] helps with everything else and the more DRAM you have the more you benefit from your host's filesystem buffers (IO not hitting the SSD)

 

[1] both bandwidth and especially latency/IOPS, forget about HDDs here and always use fast SSDs

Sorry if I was unclear. X64 I have no problem. I want a ARM based machine.

 

I am looking for a recommendation for a ARM based board to use for development.  

I fear I still don't understand your goal (the 'building images' part since if it's about 'Armbian images' then only possible platform is x64). Anyway: if it's about compiling stuff highly parallel then these ressources might be useful: http://wiki.ant-computing.com/Choosing_a_processor_for_a_build_farm#Analysis_on_2016.2F02.2F07

OK,

Forget the building images. 

 

I am interested in building a ARM based development machine for compiling and testing programs for the ARM processor. I do not want to cross compile.

I do not plan to run the machine headless. I will not be connecting a keyboard mouse or screen.

 

For storage, I would like to use RAID 1 (mirror) I would like a fast SATA interface that can support at least 2 SATA fast SSD.

 

I would like it to run  Armbian

 

Any suggestions?

 

Thanks, Steve

The RAID is a tough point, I will ignore it for now.  The highest core count device Armbian officially supports in the Odroid XU4.  There are headless server variants of it with USB3 -> SATA in a nice case available (HC1).  Now, it is an HMP processor with 4 big and 4 small cores, I can't say for sure how compilation will look like, I use one for a media server and software transcoding. (Only a stream at a time, nothing insane).  

 

Tony,

Thanks for the comments. I was looking at the Odroid UX4. You confirmed it. I'm going to skip the directly attached RAID and use Network Attached Storage.

 

Thanks again,

Steve

1 hour ago, TonyMac32 said:

There are headless server variants of it with USB3 -> SATA in a nice case available (HC1)

 

Having both I would always prefer the HC1 over XU4 for heat dissipation reasons alone. And I would combine the HC1 with a fast SSD for such workloads.

 

1 hour ago, TonyMac32 said:

Now, it is an HMP processor with 4 big and 4 small cores, I can't say for sure how compilation will look like

 

One of the two guys behind my link above shares some insights: https://www.cnx-software.com/2017/08/10/hardkernel-to-launch-stackable-49-odroid-hc1-home-cloud-200-odroid-mc1-cluster-solutions/#comment-545018