Capabilities of Raspberry Pi 2 for Big Data and Video Streaming Applications in Data Centres Nick J. Schot, Paul J.E. Velthuis, Bj¨orn F. Postema ⋆ Centre for Telematics and Information Technology, University of Twente, the Netherlands {n.j.schot, p.j.e.velthuis}@student.utwente.nl, b.f.postema@utwente.nl http://www.utwente.nl/ewi/dacs/ Abstract. Many new data centres have been built in recent years in order to keep up with the rising demand for server capacity. These data centres require a lot of electrical energy and cooling. Big data and video streaming are two heavily used applications in data centres. This paper experimentally investigates the possibilities and benefits of using cheap, low power and widely supported hardware in the form of a micro data centre with big data and video streaming as its main application area. For this purpose, multiple Raspberry Pi 2 Model B (RPi2)’s have been used in order to build a fully functional distributed Hadoop and video streaming setup that has acceptable performance and extends to new research opportunities. We experimentally validated the new setup to fit in a data centre environment by analysis of its performance, scalability, energy consumption, temperature and manageability. This paper pro- poses a high concurrency and low power setup in a small 1U form factor with an estimated number of 72 RPi2’s as an interesting alternative to traditional rack servers. Keywords: Micro data centre, Raspberry Pi 2, benchmarking, Hadoop, big data, video streaming, cloud computing 1 Introduction In data centres, the density of servers increased significantly in the past years [16]. New technologies emerge, e.g., blade servers, that not only decrease the physical appearance of what used to be an entire rack full of servers, but also decrease power consumption by implementing new technologies. ARM proces- sors, another relatively new technology, might actually fit the increasing demand for modularity in data centres. Since Raspberry Pi’s are fully functional servers, that have an ARM processor, a relatively powerful graphical chip onboard and use little energy, these should be considered as a serious alternative. The main ⋆ The work in this paper has been supported by the Dutch national STW project Cooperative Networked Systems (CNS), as part of the program “Robust Design of Cyber- Physical Systems” (CPS).