Cluster resource suggestions.

Jayv2251

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I started thinking about this pet project of mine about a year ago. You can't go anywhere these days without seeing something being mentioned about cyrpto currency. I had my first taste of potential when a small token coin shot from .0000001 to .02. Literally, overnight what was once worth less than $50 was now worth $2500! Being new and all, I sold. Had I held until this token coin hit its all-time high, of $0.08, I would have had $100K!!!

Looking for a way to passively earn crypto, I thought about a Linux cluster I had built many years ago. I know of two instances where people have built clusters to mine. The first Harvard student hacked the campus supercomputer which had 14,000 Xeon processors and 10Tb of ram. In the second instance, Samsung corp used 40 Galaxy S5s and a laptop with Linux to build a cluster. Sadly how they did this isn't available.

I then turned to YouTube. Where you can find videos on how to build a raspberry pi cluster using Kubernetes. And others on mining with the raspberry pi. And finally, one video using a Kubernetes cluster to mine crypto. And this is where I'm stuck. I started to install Kubernetes on an old laptop I have, but that system died. The post I made back in March is no longer relevant.

So, I need some advice on both hardware and software. For the hardware. Simple and cheap. Looking for an inexpensive laptop either a pawnshop finds or refurbing off amazon. I'll need a fair good router because I'll be linking nodes wirelessly. Nodes... Older Android cellphones with Ubuntu installed. When I took my Linux courses back in the early 2000s, I was told it didn't matter whether or not all the nodes were identical or not. Of course, if they are, I can see how that would save time adding new nodes. Yet I've recently read that Kubernetes nodes MUST be identical?

Software... Obviously, Ubuntu unless something better is suggested. Kubernetes and all associated networking packages installed. I mentioned I see quite a bit done with raspberry pi's, and from what I have seen, it's not that different than Linux. I would like a better way to add nodes than what I'm seeing online though. I initially thought of building a Beowulf cluster, but as I read more about Kubernetes, the more I liked it. Using containers, I can assure each core inside each processor, and all the threads are being utilized, making for a more efficient cluster.

All this is made possible because XMRig is multi-thread capable crypto mining software. As great as that is, I can see how it could be tweaked to be better. Currently, you have to hit the command line to change which token you are mining, add your wallet, and switch between mining pools. I'd like to streamline this a bit as well.

I know this is feasible, as there's a video on how to build a Kubernetes pi mining cluster. It's just translating that into Linux and obtaining the right hardware. While I save for a replacement laptop to act as the master node, what would you recommend I be reading? Can someone either confirm whether each node has to be identical or not? I was hoping to add nodes as the budget permits buying used phones via the marketplace and ebay.
 

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