Embedded hardware recoms?
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Hi all,
I know what you might think: Gosh, another thread of this and probably you're right. But of the opportunities given ATM I'm a bit lost.
So here's the profile: I'm looking for hardware for remote offices (company workers at home for example)
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Device should run embedded and without huge power consumption. Should also be quiet/fanless, because it will run in living area
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Should be powerful enough to e.g. run a little bit of filtering and a few IPSec/SSL tunnels
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Possibility to perhaps upgrade to HDD or 2,5" flash device when using things like SQUID (not planned ATM but possible)
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A bit of power in backup it is needed ;)
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And perhaps the biggest problem: Should be available to buy in Europe (german speaking countries would be best)
Last point has been pretty hard while researching possibilities, as I was unable to find e.g. the OpenBricks from Hacom somewhere near the location of that company to buy them.
So perhaps you have a few ideas to throw in. Yes the list above looks a bit weird ;) but that's mainly because the home-offices are for IT guys, that know a bunch about networking and security and as I know them like to play around with the features of the device so it shouldn't be the slowest one. As I'm unsure how the ALIX'es behave nowadays (the last one I got with 1.2rel was a bit slow when it came to the WebGUI) and the "old" FX5620 unavailable in Germany, I'm open to suggestions.
Greets
Grey -
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I have used a net5501 and a X7SPA-H, both with 2.0. The Geode LX800 is enough to route close to wirespeed, but you're right about the UI being slow, particularly at the dashboard if it's trying to graph a bunch of interfaces. vpn will pose another challenge, depending on your bandwidth, although the Geode does have some acceleration built in. The standard case can be fitted with a 2.5" drive, and I believe there is a European distributor.
The SM board feels much quicker with its dual Atom. Power consumption is higher than the net5501 (20W compared to 7W), but it will take up to 4G of RAM, which you will want if you install squid or snort later. The CPU is fanless (optional, actually) and maybe mine was just defective, or maybe it never got warm enough, but the PSU fan never did turn on. The PSU did give off a slight ringing sound, but I replaced it right away with an M4-ATX from mini-box.com anyway. Routing capacity should be in the neighbourhood of 2-300 mbps without vpn. Not sure about the availability in Europe.
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fit-PC2i SSD, 1.6GHz, 1GB RAM, Wifi, 8GB Solid State Disk (SSD)
http://www.fit-pc2.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=1712Mini-itx
Like http://forum.pfsense.org/index.php/topic,30096.msg156026.html#msg156026Mini-itx with a vlan switch
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@clarknova: Yeah, there is. Wim over at kd85.com sells those nifty soekris 5501. Nice touch and with a bit more RAM than ALIX but price against pcengines is hard to match (for the difference of 256mb ram). But thanks to mention the SM.
@Perry: Mini ITX with VLAN switch would be nice, but a bit over the top for them (even if the power would be very nice). About the PC2i: Those is the verison with 2 Gigabit Nics, right? Do you have hands on experience on those? They look very promising. Low power footprint, a Gig of RAM, WiFi wouldn't be needed but a nice touch and cost of the SSD could be avoided by using SD, USB or CF Card. Very nice indeed! Someone has more infos on them?
Thanks a lot guys,
Grey
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Do you have hands on experience on those?
Nope ( looking for a sponsor :) )
The reason why I find the vlan option worth mentioning is that in most home cases you would have a switch behind it anyway. The same goes for the wifi.
The green count (nature vs euros) 1 watt a year running 24-7-365 cost around 2€ almost 3€ here in Denmark. The watt different between a fit-pc vs mini-itx is around 30 watt.
So with the normal lifespan 3-5 years, it mounts up to 180-300€ saved on the power bill.
