That box has two 50W TDP processors in a 1U enclosure, it's going to be loud.  ;)
Potentially way too loud though it has thermal fan speed control so if you are only using it for light duties it will be quieter.
Also it's far more powerful than you need for a home box. Unless you've got a crazy speed home connection.  :)

Steve

Thanks for your feedback

My worked fine when I first received it, even though it had been badly packed and damaged in transit, then one day it just didn't boot. Symptoms just like yours, arm/disarm LED doing something it shouldn't at power on. The previous owner may have known nothing about it.

Steve

They might - If anything gives you problems it will the the RTL8111D NICs.  Same in both boxes.

You could try it with one before you buy 10,000 units.

Thing to watch with the Chinese guys there is you need to be sure they don't change specs on you.

Some Chinese companies seem to not know the value of maintaining a certain product line more than 5 days yet.

Yep - Those work.  I have gotten then for $20ish

http://www.ebay.com/itm/INTEL-DUAL-PORT-GIGABIT-ETHERNET-NIC-SERVER-ADAPTER-NC360T-HP-PROLIANT-DL160-G6/130986855852?_trksid=p2047675.m1850&_trkparms=aid%3D333005%26algo%3DRIC.FIT%26ao%3D1%26asc%3D12%26meid%3D1466837804531550502%26pid%3D100011%26prg%3D1005%26rk%3D2%26rkt%3D5%26sd%3D171056854896%26

So I compiled em-7.3.8 on a FreeBSD-8.3 virtual machine. I am successfully able to load that driver during boot for the virtual machine and everything seems to work.

I moved the driver over to PfSense's /boot/modules, gave proper 555 permissions, and added 'if_em_load="YES"' to /boot/loader.conf.local.

My PfSense would hang when booting on "configuring WAN interface". ifconfig in single user mode showed the interfaces seemed to work with the new driver, maybe I need to reconfigure my interfaces for pfsense? I can try it, I'll do it tonight when I have more time.

What's weird is I'm pretty sure this NIC worked flawlessly with PfSense 2.0.1 when I used it over a year ago.

Sounds like you have the idea.  Have fun! :)

Steve

For anyone not following the 'G' thread a much newer driver is now available to test here: http://forum.pfsense.org/index.php/topic,65355.msg365028.html#msg365028

Steve

Great ! Thank you Steve.

Yes, pfSense just sees them as NICs. You can assign them to WANs or LANs or configure a more complex setup that blurs the lines.  :)

Steve

That looks like it should be a Realtek chip, is that right?

Careful with your bits and Bytes there!  ;)

Steve

Maybe but you'd have to access it directly since you can't boot anything from which to read it. Sonicwall seem to have gone to some length to prevent it being modified. It would be interesting to get another opinion on it though. See what you can find.

Steve

Hi Everybody,
actual I run 2.1 Release on Pfsense. I can choose Congstar as 3G UMTS Provider. But the Link ist flapping on 3G Modem.
Can Anyone help me ??

Sep 17 11:06:32 kernel: da0: Attempt to query device size failed: NOT READY, Medium not present
Sep 17 11:06:32 kernel: da0: 40.000MB/s transfers
Sep 17 11:06:32 kernel: da0: <internet mmc="" storage="" 2.31="">Removable Direct Access SCSI-2 device
Sep 17 11:06:32 kernel: da0 at umass-sim0 bus 0 scbus0 target 0 lun 0
Sep 17 11:06:32 kernel: (probe0:umass-sim0:0:0:0): SCSI sense: NOT READY asc:3a,0 (Medium not present)
Sep 17 11:06:32 kernel: (probe0:umass-sim0:0:0:0): SCSI status: Check Condition
Sep 17 11:06:32 kernel: (probe0:umass-sim0:0:0:0): CAM status: SCSI Status Error
Sep 17 11:06:31 kernel: (probe0:umass-sim0:0:0:0): TEST UNIT READY. CDB: 0 0 0 0 0 0
Sep 17 11:06:31 kernel: umass0: <internetstick 0="" 2="" internetstick,="" class="" 0,="" rev="" 2.00="" 0.00,="" addr="">on usbus1
Sep 17 11:06:31 kernel: u3g0: Found 3 ports.
Sep 17 11:06:31 kernel: u3g0: <internetstick 0="" 2="" internetstick,="" class="" 0,="" rev="" 2.00="" 0.00,="" addr="">on usbus1
Sep 17 11:06:31 kernel: ugen1.2: <internetstick>at usbus1
Sep 17 11:06:29 kernel: stray irq7
Sep 17 11:06:28 kernel: ugen1.2: <internetstick>at usbus1 (disconnected)
Sep 17 11:06:27 kernel: ugen1.2: <internetstick>at usbus1

Sep 17 11:22:18 ppp: [opt6_link0] CHAT: The modem is not responding to "AT" at ModemCmd: label.
Sep 17 11:22:05 ppp: [opt6_link0] Link: reconnection attempt 61
Sep 17 11:22:02 ppp: [opt6_link0] Link: reconnection attempt 61 in 3 seconds
Sep 17 11:22:02 ppp: [opt6_link0] LCP: Down event
Sep 17 11:22:02 ppp: [opt6_link0] Link: DOWN event
Sep 17 11:22:02 ppp: [opt6_link0] MODEM: chat script failed</internetstick></internetstick></internetstick></internetstick></internetstick></internet>

Been using mine for well over 12 months with several (10+) vlans with no issues at all.

That is simplifying the situation somewhat but yes it's basically true.
Unless all of your users are simultaneously running bit torrent clients creating many many thousands of connections I wouldn't expect a problem. Even in that extreme situation I wouldn't expect a problem, 2GB is a lot of connection states.
My home box, which is running a P4 underclocked to 1.2GHz, can push >250Mbps when doing only firewall and NAT.

As soon as you introduce extra services like Squid or Snort the hardware requirements increase significantly. Both of those require significant CPU time to process packets and lots of RAM leaving less for connections. Even so I wouldn't expect you to have any real problems should you decide to run Squid in the future. It looks like those gen 8 microservers have upgradable CPUs anyway.

Steve

I've been using one of these for a while with pfsense 2.1 (the NICs aren't supported in 2.0.x), and it's been great. Handles 100 megabit internet service without breaking a sweat.

http://www.gigabyte.us/products/product-page.aspx?pid=4444#ov

Would be easy enough to add a low-profile NIC to that.

-edit-

Just found out there's a new version of the motherboard out, with a newer Celeron based on Intel's 22 nm process.

http://www.gigabyte.us/products/product-page.aspx?pid=4497

If you used Win32 Disk Imager and you are using FreeDOSBios2.img.gz you will have to unzip the file image file first. Did you do that? You can easily prove that the image was written correctly by reading the CF card in Windows.

Steve