MikroTik RDS2216 Inbound with 20x U.2 NVMe and 100GbE on Arm
The MikroTik RDS2216 combines a U.2 NAS, a 100GbE, 25GbE, and 10GbE switch, and a lightweight Arm server into a single machine. As one might expect, there are some caveats, but this looks like one of the coolest devices we have seen this year. Just when you think you have the machine figured out, it appears as though you do not as it just has more features.
MikroTik RDS2216 Inbound with 20x U.2 NVMe and 100GbE on Arm
Things that we were not expecting when we woke up this morning:
- MikroTik making a hybrid NVMe NAS, router, switch, server
- The server to be green
Yet both seem to be true. Let us start with the front(?) of the box. Here you can see the green color along with five columns of four U.2 drives. Given this is a 1U box, those cannot be 15mm drives and, instead are likely 7mm U.2 drive bays.
Also, given this is MikroTik, these are PCIe Gen3 x2 each. That is not exactly fast by today’s standards, but that is still 40 PCIe Gen3 lanes worth of storage. There are even two M.2 SATA internal slots.
On the other side of the system, there is so much going on. We have redundant power supplies, and a lot of networking. There are two 10Gbase-T multi-gig ports, four SFP28 25GbE ports, two QSFP28 100GbE ports, four SFP+ 10G ports, and then a gigabit and management port. We also get USB and SFF-8644 connectivity. We are not sure what that SFF-8644 is yet, perhaps SATA which would be neat? It does not seem like it is SAS.
All of this connectivity is powered by a Marvell 98DX4310 which is what is used in switches like the MikroTik CRS504-4XQ-IN. It also means we should get some L3 offloading.
The CPU is interesting since it is an Annapura Labs (part of Amazon) chip. The Annapurna Labs AL73400 is a 16 core 2GHz 64-bit Arm CPU which should be similar to what is found in the CCR2116-12G-4S+.
The minor bummer here is that this is only a 32GB of DDR4 device. When it comes to servers, having more RAM is often required. The idea of running containers on a RouterOS V7 device like this makes sense, but we would really like more than 32GB as an option. Also, the onboard storage would be nice if it was a bit more without going to the installed drives.
Also, the system is green.
Final Words
In many ways, this feels like a MikroTik CRS504/ CRS510 and a CCR2116 got together and added storage. Too bad they did not add RDIMM support. MikroTik and Ampere have had postings about working together previously. Hopefully that becomes the network side of this with RDIMM support and more. Assuming this sells for under $2000 it might make for a really neat option, but it is also one we want to try before recommending.
via servethehome
