Any benefit of dual AMD CPU?
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I am using now via c3 800mhz platform for fw and squid package.
Whats on my mind… to build 5 pf boxes that will have:
1 ovpn server, 4 opvn clients
all squid, squidgard, possible havp
Squidgard is hogging my cpu now.
Choices are (all amd) Sempron LE, Athlon LE and Athlon x2 II.
LE have lower power consumation but last one have bigger cash and dual cpu.
Maybe dual for server opvn and athlon for others or.... ?
And what version would I use stable or 1.2.3RC1 (any problem untill now width packages i should use in this combo?)
Another question i am going from pata to sata disk. Is there any benefit from disk cache above 8MB in pf? -
If all points have 2000/256kb, how do I count "selection & sizing" from home page?
Throughput is what in my case?
Clients have internet 2mb (dl) and 256kb (ul, less I know :) so this equals to 2mb (or 2.25mb) ?
From server side it has same value or "server stuff" of ovpn eats some for this 4 clients that will always be loged to server.
Because of this possible effect I will change internet for server to 4000/384 (256kb x 4 will eat 1mb of my dl speed on server?)
This is wan throughput so Sempron should be enough even for server.
Lets talk about IPsec throughput.
For clients this number is 2x256kb because vpn is symetric (am i wrong here?), for server if I stick width ul speed of 384 this number is 2x384kb. So if I am right in this theory Sempron is also overkill for even server.
Last point is squidgard and havp. Athlon has bigger cache and dual cpu could bring at least 30-50% more power.
Anyone, join this discussion ;) -
I am running a virtual machine and I have 1Gb of ram, and I have it is a quad phemon 2.5 processor. It runs great. I have three machines, and connected vpn's. I have a 3mb / 512kb dsl connection. The processor is never over 5% maybe 10% even with file transfers.
I have run on pf-sense on pIII, Xeon processors, p II processors, P4 , dual core and now virtual servers.
The biggest limiting factor is the upload speed on my dsl. I wish I could get more upload speed.
RC -
Phenom is mega beast even under virtual. Tell me something about your experience width dual cpu.
If someone doesn't correct me I will use Sempron for clients and Athlon or dual for server.
Here I can not found LE version of dual AMD. -
I was just thinking about it, I started with a dual PIII 333 or a dual 233 HP LC 2/3. I had 2 10/100 adapters in it. I have upgraded through several different systems all dual. In fact I can't remember but one machine that was a single processor.
I just always have built dual processor boxes for firewalls. I have a DELL server SC series that I am going to sell it's a dual core processor in it. I got three nic's in it with raid on-board 2 x 160 GB drives.
Peformance has always been good. I used a dual pII 450 at a clients site when their firewall died and it supported 5 clients with 3 vpn connections without any issues including remote printing. I think I started with dual machines due to the banking enviroment I came from. They just always seemed to give better overall performance and seem to handle loading of network traffic better.
All of my machines are multi-core/multi-processor, I run virtualization and a few heavy processing applications and games at home. Hince my requirment for dual or muilti-processor machines.
RC -
I decided. Sempron for clients Athlon for server.
It's to bad that I didn't get answers for my questions (theory and sizing stuff, perfect for faq on home page).
Snort is not working (i see ony sip rules), and squidgaurd i will try width new cpu. -
Go ahead and use the lowest powered processor for your firewall. PFSense typically doesn't use much CPU time. Not sure how this changes with a squid proxy, but with a healthy rule table and 20-30mbit of consistent web traffic (40 webservers + 5-8mbit consistent email traffic), we run about 25% CPU usage on a P3 850 w/ 512MB of RAM.
We've considered going to higher performance machines, but the old dell's that we have don't have a power switch that can get accidentally turned off, and they just chug along with not a care in the world. We typically go over a year or more between reboots, and the last two reboots have been because our upstream provider was having issues. We power cycled the system just to make sure that it wasn't on our end.