Good Low Power 1U Server Recomendations?
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I am looking for a good 1U Server to run PFSense on. I would prefer to run something low wattage, so have been looking at something like an Intel Atom. Anyone have recommendations? Thanks.
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Though not technically a low wattage…
the Dell PowerApp 100s / intel ISP1100 are i810 based P3s with removable video and scsi cards, leaving a fairly low power system with a slowish coppermine.
I have quite a few and they work great, ( have 2 fxp intel NICs onboard ).
These are old systems of course to be found on eBay and are cheap, but for something new.... dunno.I'm waiting for a dual NIC atom board myself, although the i945 video eats power so they say.
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i've been buying up a few of some IBM servers and they have intel 10/100/1000 NICs…they are solid. They dont have redundant power though...They support raid 1 with their onboard scsi controller, so it would be redundant as far as drives.
The specific model I have is the xSeries 335 (8676). Dual xeon's (2.4 to 3.06ghz). I have 3-4 gigs in the servers I have, and 2 72 gig scsi drives. They SCSI drives are pretty quick. They are 1u and dont use much power. I guess it depends on how many interfaces you need. I only use 2, so it's great for me...but they do have expansion pci slots. (2 full height if I remember right).
You can find just he 1u server with no drives on "the auction site" for under 100 shipped normally...then just buy your 2 drives..($40-$120 depending on size)and if you dont have the cable they need to configure initially its a C2T cable ($35-$60)...you wont need it after you configure it. :) Of course you don't need anything like this to run it..but it may be a good investment if you use it for awhile (years).
Good luck.
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I am looking for a good 1U Server to run PFSense on. I would prefer to run something low wattage, so have been looking at something like an Intel Atom. Anyone have recommendations? Thanks.
A 1U (rackmount) server and something with an Atom processor are opposite ends of the spectrum. What do you need? How many users or bandwidth?
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We sell 1u appliances with pfSense preloaded, if interested.
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If you're willing to build it yourself, a 1U case and an Atom board (that MSI one with dual Intel NICs seems ideal) should be pretty easy to put together.
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Though not technically a low wattage…
the Dell PowerApp 100s / intel ISP1100 are i810 based P3s with removable video and scsi cards, leaving a fairly low power system with a slowish coppermine.
I have quite a few and they work great, ( have 2 fxp intel NICs onboard ).
These are old systems of course to be found on eBay and are cheap, but for something new.... dunno.I'm waiting for a dual NIC atom board myself, although the i945 video eats power so they say.
The ISP1100's are a nice, simple, low power solution. Also marketed as the Dell PowerEdge 350, PowerApp 100, and a variety of more-obscure things. The base platform is a competent 1U server that is capable of working headless, with full serial console support in BIOS. One half height and one full height PCI slot available - no onboard video, though, so if you must have VGA, you eat a slot. Also, outfitting memory is vaguely tricky, you have to use lower density memory.
We have one backup server that's an ISP1100 and it is currently out of the rack, and I just put it on the wattmeter. It's pulling a total of 68 watts. This includes an Intel PIII-850 CPU, 4 x 256MB memory. a 4GB CF card in a CF-IDE gadget, a video card, a SATA card, and a 750GB HDD. Stripping out the HDD, SATA, and 3 x 256MB reduces that to 52 watts, which is just fantastic and unbelievable, compared to most of today's contemporary servers.
You can also do some really neat hacks with the ISP1100's. For example, they come with a waffle-grid vent on the front. Chewing out a few bars, we've converted some ISP1100's to hold a CF-to-IDE holder in the front panel, so that you can trivially remove/swap/upgrade the compact flash module without any problems. This hack makes the ISP1100 a very attractive platform for use with something like pfSense.
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If Atoms are all you need, you could look into a 1u case from Morix from like logicsupply or someone, there are lots of little ITX shops that have 1u hardware and adapters/cards geared for ITX and lower power usage PC's, the Via boards and Jetway board they sell also have lots off good options for 2 or more Ethernet ports built in if you want to spend a little bit more on the VIA cpu's, or you could do an Intel Atom ITX board with a PCI riser and a PCI Ethernet card. I use these all the time to build low cost low power PF Sense firewalls and Clusters where clustering is the object not huge processing nodes or sometimes graphics cards are the goal with low power requirements. Give these a try that may be what your looking for. Best of both worlds sometimes, you know.
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This is what you need….
It was an option for me as well, but I decided on IBM Xseries 335 due to performance criteria.(users and bandwith)...
http://www.yawarra.com.au/en-rack.php
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or Check out www.ironsystems.com
I have now 3 boxes from them all 19"x8" -1 U rackmounts. AR210s all work GREAT under pfsense.
