I've got about a month ago a Compute Blade RC2 (Kickstarter campaign ongoing at the moment of writing this).

It's a piece of hardware designed for high-density clusters. You can put around 6 RPI 4B boards in a 19" 1U and you can put around 20 blades in the same 1U.

Tech specs look like this (from the website):

  • Support all Raspberry Pi CM4
  • NVMe SSD up to 22110
  • Gigabit Ethernet
  • Power over Ethernet IEEE 802.3at (PoE+) up to 30W (normal operation 2-8W)
  • Optional modules
  • USB-A
  • MicroSD card port
  • Two digital RGB LEDs
  • Hardware switchable WiFi, BT, and EEPROM write-protection
  • HDMI port for monitor (up to 4k60)
  • USB-C port and PRIBOOT button to flash the bootloader, access to eMMC/SD card or tests
  • TPM 2.0 onboard
  • Programmable button on the front panel

How does it look like?

It's official image looks like this:

Compute blade

In my setup looks like this (potato quality):

A RPI4 and the Compute Blade

What I'm doing with it?

I've reprogrammed the CM4 I had to boot off the M.2 SSD first and that was surprisingly easy. I've installed RPI OS (debian based) and I left it there running powered off the POE.

I've integrated it in a tiny cluster with three other Raspberry Pi 4b SBCs and it's on standby while I figure a way to collect metrics.

..And in the future?

I've got a bunch of ideas. I'd like a full-ish blade cluster to replace my dual Xeon server. At least for some less CPU-intensive tasks (like NodeRed, ths blog...).

I want to know more!

Head over to the website and support the Kickstarter campain :)