Custom M-ITX board
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Yeah do you have an eta on this run of 200 boards??? otherwise its just speculation, i would like to get something happening with the next 2-3weeks
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Why not buy a supermicro board for similar costs that you know is properly designed and broad support? I'd not trust any critical use to a small run board from some unknown vendor….
I know someone who is having a custom m-ITX board made. 200 copies of this board will be made in the first run. The board will be based on the new C206 chipset and will take any of the E12XX series Xeon CPU range as well i3, i5 and i7 procs.
The E1220 Xeon is interesting….20w TDP. The i3 proc could be interesting to run a fw on as well.
I need 20+ boards myself so have got involved in this custom board. I have asked for 4 x Intel 82574L Nics to satisfy my requirements and they have said this can be done.
Is there anything else desirable to include on this board for pfsense use you can think of? The E12xx Xeons and the i3/5/7 have the encryption acceleration instruction set onboard so that's covered already. Anything else? I am wondering if a daughter board that takes 2x Fiber connections would be useful - any of you think that would be useful?
In general would sort of features would make this board kick ass for a fw use?
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Yeah do you have an eta on this run of 200 boards??? otherwise its just speculation, i would like to get something happening with the next 2-3weeks
I can understand you want to get something together now and that's fine, some people here might even join in on your group buy. But that doesn't mean you get to come into someone else's thread and say what they are putting together is speculation and not going to happen anytime soon. Of course they know it requires a quantity and have to pay a fee for it to be built, that's common sense. The way I take the info from the OP is that he knows someone who is already doing this and has everything lined up. Now he is just looking for "what would you do with this" type responses. Since they are making 200 boards, the person that originally started this probably doesn't need anywhere near that many and is looking for others that might want to share in the 200 boards with their own customized versions (small enough customizations that it can be applied to all of them without major retooling). Similar to the group buy you are trying to get started with an already built board.
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Count me in for three boards if the motherboard contains:
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4 x Intel 82574L NICs
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1 x IPMI like NIC
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(at least) one x8 PCIe slot
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16 GB DDR3 RAM
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mini-ITX or mini-DTX form factor
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6x SATA ports
Ideal board to be used for:
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Firewall (PFsense)
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NAS
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VM
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Update on this custom ITX…...
It was still born during birth......... too bad.
A few of us were pursuing this with vigor. The NRE and 200 boards were covered. The deal breaker ?.......7 months lead time!
Moved on now to use a board designed by someone else ...much easier and less arrows in the head. Now, now...all of you saying "i told you so"....... we tried , we failed, we've moved on.
Now going to use this board.... http://www.commell.com.tw/News/News/News_20110617_LV-67H.htm
the interesting thing is that it has 2 x 82574L NIC's onboard and can take 4 more 82574L NIC's via mini-pcie expansion slots. Since each mini-pcie expansion slot takes a card that has either 1 or 2 82574L's on board it means we can configure the board with either 2/3/4/5/6 82574L NIC's
The board can take 9-24V input OR ATX power...nice!
i3/i5/i7 compatible and up to 16GB RAM ( but 8GB Ram sticks = $$$$$$ so not really practical - better to stick to 4GB Ram sticks)
I think that ticks all the boxes........ up to 6 x 82574L NIC's, 9-24V DC input or ordinary ATX power supply, Sandy Bridge i3 compataible and up to 16GB Ram all on a m-ITX
And its available now...not in 7 months time!!!!
I have 8 sample boards inbound now. Should be here next week. If this works as advised it is my version of the perfect pfsense m-ITX!!
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This is a better link to read about the board….. http://www.commell.com.tw/Download/Datasheet/LV-67H_Datasheet.pdf
Also one other interesting thing.....one of those PCIE mini slots has a SIM card socket on it .....so it may be possible to rig up a 3G modem as a backup WAN link with a PCIE mini card modem? Need to look into that. It may be the icing on the cake
and the 82574L PCIE mini card NIC's....
http://www.commell.com.tw/Product/Peripheral/PCI%20Express%20mini%20card/MPX-574D2.HTM
http://www.commell.com.tw/Product/Peripheral/PCI%20Express%20mini%20card/MPX-574D.HTM
and yes those mini card nics work on the LV67H - i phoned them and asked.
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The AES-NI instructions are worthless on pfSense, at least in 1.2.3 and 2.0, as they are not supported until FreeBSD 8.2.
EDIT: Some additional notes:
- There is little point in using the C206 chipset as your choice of CPU would be limited to those with built-in video. You should really be using the C204 and an add-on video chip, Matrox, whatever.
- The 82574L NICs you want are supported in pfSense but the integrated 82579 is not. Are you going to have it disabled?
- Expansion options? Most Mini-ITX boards have one slot. I'd use an x8 PCI-e 2.0 if you can fit it.
I'm running a DH67CL which has the 82579 onboard nic and it's working with no problems.
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The E1220 doesn't have an integrated GPU though. So that board will either need to support booting without graphics or have some form of embedded VGA. Or have bios redirected to serial.
I can't imagine a healthy reason for a firewall to need a GPU, with perhaps the exception of a specialty latent IDS fingerprinting masking system… But even then, really? Save the space for something more useful like an FPGA or backdoor microcontroller. At most, other then storage and network, you're going to want serial and maybe a simple LCD screen for a status device...
Or maybe I've just avoided having to look at the micro/pico ITX consumer CPU boards for so long that BIOS doesn't get sent out to serial by default. World clearly coming to an end... Wow, and even the new Intel embedded dev board has a GPU (http://intel.ententeweb.com/bsps/product_detail.asp?item=DEVBOARD-1-d510) Please world, more haptics, less retina magnets! Keep those fields programmable.
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Update on this custom ITX…...
It was still born during birth......... too bad.
A few of us were pursuing this with vigor. The NRE and 200 boards were covered. The deal breaker ?.......7 months lead time!
Moved on now to use a board designed by someone else ...much easier and less arrows in the head. Now, now...all of you saying "i told you so"....... we tried , we failed, we've moved on.
Now going to use this board.... http://www.commell.com.tw/News/News/News_20110617_LV-67H.htm
the interesting thing is that it has 2 x 82574L NIC's onboard and can take 4 more 82574L NIC's via mini-pcie expansion slots. Since each mini-pcie expansion slot takes a card that has either 1 or 2 82574L's on board it means we can configure the board with either 2/3/4/5/6 82574L NIC's
The board can take 9-24V input OR ATX power...nice!
i3/i5/i7 compatible and up to 16GB RAM ( but 8GB Ram sticks = $$$$$$ so not really practical - better to stick to 4GB Ram sticks)
I think that ticks all the boxes........ up to 6 x 82574L NIC's, 9-24V DC input or ordinary ATX power supply, Sandy Bridge i3 compataible and up to 16GB Ram all on a m-ITX
And its available now...not in 7 months time!!!!
I have 8 sample boards inbound now. Should be here next week. If this works as advised it is my version of the perfect pfsense m-ITX!!
So what are your thoughts on the boards? Updates???? What is the price on them? That does look like the perfect solution depending on the price/functionality/reliability/warranty.
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Got the 8 test boards in. 4Gb RAM SODIMM RAM is fitted…....still no CPU's.
These are 2nd Gen laptop Sandy Bridge CPU's that are needed and i cant find that many places that sell them. I did find what i wanted eventually. Now we sit and wait for funds to clear (international T/T) and then they will be on their way out here.
These boards are very promising. I've searched high and low for Mini ITX boards suitable for running PFsense on. Most all of them had one or two ethernet ports on board. If you wanted ethernet interface 3,4 or more you are forced into using an add on card. Have you seen the prices for an intel 4 port Gbe card !!
To me this board is the closest i have come to finding a commercially available non special order board that fits the bill.
The really special part would be to get the onboard SIM card holder in one of the mini pcie slots working with a 3G modem and addressable as an additional WAN. I've got someone looking into this.
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Will try to get something together tomorrow if time permits - first thing on the agenda is getting the Land Cruiser gear box fixed for the next field trip….. hmm - its not looking good - oil under the car everywhere !
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[HEAVY OT]What else you can expect from toyota?[/HEAVY OT]
seriously i prefer landgruisers over land rovers -
These are 2nd Gen laptop Sandy Bridge CPU's that are needed and i cant find that many places that sell them. I did find what i wanted eventually. Now we sit and wait for funds to clear (international T/T) and then they will be on their way out here.
The really special part would be to get the onboard SIM card holder in one of the mini pcie slots working with a 3G modem and addressable as an additional WAN. I've got someone looking into this.
That's kind of bad news as I was hoping you could use a cheap 1155 Pentium or Celeron in this. Adding a laptop CPU is surely going to increase the cost quite a bit.
Do you want to be able to use a 3G modem just as a fail-safe if the regular WAN goes out?
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These are 2nd Gen laptop Sandy Bridge CPU's that are needed and i cant find that many places that sell them. I did find what i wanted eventually. Now we sit and wait for funds to clear (international T/T) and then they will be on their way out here.
The really special part would be to get the onboard SIM card holder in one of the mini pcie slots working with a 3G modem and addressable as an additional WAN. I've got someone looking into this.
That's kind of bad news as I was hoping you could use a cheap 1155 Pentium or Celeron in this. Adding a laptop CPU is surely going to increase the cost quite a bit.
Do you want to be able to use a 3G modem just as a fail-safe if the regular WAN goes out?
You're probably looking at around $150-200 for one of the "Pentium-branded" chips, around $250 for an i3, $300-400 for an i5, and $400-1000 for an i7, that is assuming of course that you can actually find one.
I usually go to LogicSupply when I need specialty CPUs but their stock on these is limited to a single i5 for $300 and a quad i7 for $470, though they claim that the Pentium B810 will be available on 10/22. Maybe try calling them for alternatives.
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Didn't manage to get photos today since occupied with other issues.
Will try again tomorrow.
I have 8 x i5 CPU's coming in. I bought them for $230ish each IIRC - not too bad.
Thing is, you can either pay around $200 for a mini ITX Atom board with 2 Gb nics onboard and then pay around $420 -470 for 4 x Intel 82574L Gb NICs to get your six Gb LAN ports for a total of about $650
OR
you can buy this commell mini ITX that has 2 x 82574L NICs onboard and then add 2 x mini pcie cards that each have 2 x 82574L NICs onboard to get a total of 6 x 82574L NICs total. The commell board is about $270.00 and the mini pcie cards with 2 x 82574L NICs are about $60 per card. So grand total for the board and 2 x mini pcie cards is around $390. To that you add the i5 CPU at $230ish to give a grand grand total of $620.
So your choice - pay around $650 for a board with an Atom CPU and six x 82574L NICs and your PCIE slot is used up because of the PCIE card that contains the 4 x 82574L NICs
OR
pay around $620 for the latest Sandy Bridge mini ITX board with a 2nd Gen i5 laptop CPU that is optimized for low power and heat output and 2 x mini pcie cards to give a total of 6 x 82574L NIC's AND the PCIe slot on the board is still open and ready for an expansion card of some type - plus i can run this setup on battery since i have the option to use 9 -24V DC input OR an ATX power supply.
Now i realize this may not suit everyone's needs - not everyone wants a min of 5 x 82574L NICs - but i need them so this works for me. As well not everyone needs to run on battery - but i do since i have sites in some very wild and wooly places where the grid power is very unreliable. Since i am going to be running on battery the laptop CPU which is optimized for low power consumption (they are meant for laptops after all) is a big help to me in this scenario. The fact i have an i5 CPU onboard will be a big help if i do decide to run VM's (not sure about this yet) and the QM67 chipset is KNOWN to do VT-d
all in all this board is a home run for me …YMMV
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Any more news on this board? I'm currently trying to spec out a new system and the board you listed does sound like it could be what I'm looking for.