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• The ARM lab is starting out with with 3 servers of model Cavium ThunderX [1]
• We have a limited number of physical interfaces on each (2 x 10G and one 1 x 1G for “admin”)
• a Fuel approach, which supports VLANS, rather than an Apex (foreman/quickstack) approach which require individual NICs for each network is the way to go.
• Ubuntu as the target OS to be installed on top of bare metal cavium servers mainly based on Cavium’s recommendation/preference.
• An x86 jump server is being used to run the installer.

[1] http://www.cavium.com/newsevents-GIGABYTE-announces-384-Core-2U-server-powered-by-Cavium-ThunderX-ARMv8-processors.html

Cavium's Thunder-X SKUs:

1. ThunderX_CP: For cloud compute workloads such as public and private clouds, web caching, web serving, search, and social media data analytics.
2. ThunderX_ST: For cloud storage, big data, and distributed databases.
3. TunderX_NT: For telecom/NFV server and embedded networking applications.
4. ThunderX_SC: For secure computing applications

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Here is a low-cost ARMv8 platform described at 96boards.com at this link: https://www.96boards.org/products/ce/dragonboard410c/

We don't yet have it running yet as it needs a 12V power supply which is in the mail from Arrow Electronics (should be a link on the page above). It's certainly a challenging form-factor, as there's no built-in Ethernet, but it has wifi and one can add some 100mb USB enet dongles. This isn't awesome, but it's much closer to an OPNFV-capable ARMv8 SoC than BBBrC or rPi. We will post more when it is powered up. Anyone with interest or experience, please comment as well!