@stephenw10:

From FreeBSD directly:
http://ftp-archive.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD-Archive/old-releases/amd64/ISO-IMAGES/8.3/

Ah-hah! I was missing the "-Archive/old-releases" section of the directory tree.

Thanks very much for all your help.

@cfipilot:

@gonzopancho:

I've considered putting the PSRs out for Gold members, but haven't reached a decision on same.

However, given that I pushed the drivers into pfSense 2.1.1 (April 2014) specifically for y'all, you really weren't running pfSense on them before we were selling them (early, early 2014).

pfSense will auto-tune these things soon enough.

Any update on releasing the custom settings?

Run 2.2.

People are running in VirtualBox though. Where are you measuring the cpu load?
PfSense version? VB version?

Probably best to ask in 'Virtualization installations and techniques' though.

Steve

http://www.supermicro.com/products/system/1U/5018/SYS-5018A-MHN4.cfm

add ecc ram and a hd/ss/dsata-dom

overkill but it works

http://www.supermicro.com/products/system/1U/5018/SYS-5018A-MHN4.cfm

a more expensive option, but it will work

Also, does the fact of these being virtual machine hosts affect the ability to direct-attach?  I know I'll need to get NICs which are suitable for virtual network connections, can't remember the name for it.  But will that affect the ability to directly attach?

Thanks.

hi steve,
as u said,the mentioned hardware m3550 do anything at 24Mbps, i think 24Mbps is so terrible…
i will build pfsene with some features like that....if u are right ,  kill me myself

@jahonix:

@Harvy66:

… or a Layer2 1Gb with 10Gb uplinks.

Cisco SG500X-24-K9-G5 but it's managed L3 IIRC.

I've got a pair of the 48-port versions of those at home in my test lab.  Great switches from a functionality standpoint, though one shipped with a bad fan that I've yet to have replaced.

@Phishfry:

22x SATA ports!

:o Hard to see where the market for that is.

Steve

…a distribution-channel in Europe...

@gonzopancho:

Know of any good ones?

osnet.eu
varia-store.com
meconet.de

But they might not be distributors, more like vendors probably. Dealt with all 3 in the past on various occasions.

That hardware should be more than sufficient to run Squid as long as you don't set a huge cache size. However you probably won't see much advantage unless you have a lot of replicated downloads. The modern web is so dynamically generated that cache hits are usually low.
It will depend on your usage of course but personally I wouldn't. Try it and see.  :)

Steve

replied to your private message.

Robi,

The UART protocol for this IEI AUPS device is well documented that someone could implement this easily in NUT.

http://www.ieiworld.com/redirect.ashx?code=3&id=0A175420370520988327&dest=null

I don't think so though i'd love to wrong.  ;)
https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=mwl&apropos=0&sektion=0&manpath=FreeBSD+10.1-RELEASE&arch=default&format=html
Seems to indicate it does support 802.11N but I'm sure I read somewhere it doesn't support anything faster than 54Mbps. Hmm.

Steve

For reference it's worth reading through these threads:
https://forum.pfsense.org/index.php?topic=72142.0
https://forum.pfsense.org/index.php?topic=71949.0

Steve

The not supported WiFi PCIe card is the only thing keeping me away from installing pfSense this hardware.
By now I am running it in VMWare ESXi with two other virtual servers going very well.

I cant get this card to my country, and I can't buy on amazon.com :D

Well I finally have enough time to write this up quick.

I ordered:  http://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/2014-NEW-Intel-Celeron-C1037U-aluminum_1694884758.html  Their shipping was fast.  I got it in three days after they put it in the mail.  Unfortunately, for some reason it took them almost a week to get it out the door.  Shipping from them was the 'most' reasonable.  It is still pricey, IMO.

I added 4GB of RAM to it.  I ordered this Atheros card:  http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00JESLUWQ/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 as some research lent me to believe it would work.  It does.

Tip:  Order the computer with the cheapest WiFi adapter.  Even though the card it comes with is not supported by pfSense it's cheaper than ordering a set of plain antennas.  If you don't, then it doesn't come with any antennas and you have to order a set like this:  http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00MJU6X5U/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I used an 'old' 40GB SSD I had from my old server.  I figured I would never use a 40GB SSD for anything else.  It screwed to the bottom of the case.

The case acts as the heatsink.  I took it apart to clean and reapply the thermal grease because I didn't trust the glopped on crap that it came with.  Also, you will need the newest pfSense 2.2 beta.

There are a ton…metric ton of options in the BIOS.  I played around with too many and wound up having to reinstall because I screwed something up and it wouldn't boot into pfSense anymore.  I did enable speedstep in the BIOS and then enabled Intel support in pfSense and pfSense recognized it.  One thing I wonder about is where I get BIOS updates from?

Here is a link to my build pictures.  Google + has royally screwed up my Picasa album and I couldn't get individual pictures linked so I linked the whole thing in one album:

https://plus.google.com/photos/118395195107291110441/albums/6093568438407647809?authkey=COuD-ezPksvppQE

I think for the price this thing is hard to beat with dual Intel NICs and the form factor.  With a VPN, 30Mbs down and 5Mbs up, wireless cameras on the WiFi streaming to the LAN, a NAS serving out pr0n to several XBMC and PLEX devices I have CPU usage of less than 5%.  It has no moving parts and is completely silent.  CPU ran about 50 degrees C and then I enabled SpeedStep and it sits around 47C to 50C.

I'll answer any questions you guys have.

thanks for the examples Khampol / messerchmidt.

The possibility of other applications looks good - squid might help with the limited speed at our site especially.

thanks also stephenw10 - I will check in with netgate. I might go for their support contract instead as a way of supproting them - not sure yet!

cheers all