New pfSense user - Dell Poweredge 1750
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Hello all…first post here.
I am a retired ipCop user from about 5 years ago. I had to resort to a little plastic box router since I was moving into an apartment. Now that I am back in a house, I wanted to move to a more robust solution (even though I'll probably use onloy 10% of pfSense's abilities). I asked a coworker is was still using ipcop and he pointed me to pfSense.
So, my very basic question is this...
I just bought a Dell Poweredge 1750 (the specs are listed below). I plan on using pfSense in a very limited fashion...port forwarding, reserved IPs, etc. No VPN tunneling or the sort (not right now anyway). Also, I will not be running a DMZ so a 3rd NIC is not required. I just want to know (mainly from people who have experiece with the Poweredges) if there are any common pitfalls that I should be aware of with the 1750's...scsi, xeon, ECC memory, PSU, etc.? I have searched the forum for everything "poweredge" and nothing really jumped out.
Model: 1750 Dell PowerEdge
Processor: 2 x Intel Xeon 2.4GHz / 1 MB Cache / 533MHz FSB
Memory Installed: 1 GB 1GB RAM
Memory Type: 4x 256MB PC-2100R ECC DDR SDRAM
Hard Drives: 1x 36GB Ultra320 10K SCSI Drive and Tray Installed
Riser Board: PCI Riser Board with 2 PCI-X ports
External Media: CD-ROM and Floppy
Power Supply: 320W Hot Plug Power Supplies - Optional Upgrade to Two
Backplane: 1 x 3 Bay 80Pin Hot Swap Ultra320 SCSI
Ethernet: 2x Onboard Dual Gigabit Intel 1000 Pro
Video: 8MB ATI Rage XL PCI video controller
Form Factor: 1U Rack HeightI assume that the 1GB of RAM should be more than sufficient. Is there any advantage to upgrading to 2GB...given my current and future use?
TIA,
John
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I've installed pfsense on a 1750 and it looked fine. I actually kind of used it to clear the disks…so i didn't do much after the installation.
1Gb of ram should be enough, but why use such a "heavy" machine? I would prefer a more energy efficient solution for a home situation. (but thats because we pay $ 0,28 per kwh. :-X -
That machine should work a treat. I've used pfsense on old 1650s and 1550s, and today have it on a PowerEdge R210 (which is lovely!) I've also had it on all kinds of random old desktops, some with 256mb RAM… so you'll be set. I don't think you'll have any need to upgrade the RAM unless you've got 17 kids and they're all heavy BitTorrent users.
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Thank you for the reassurance guys!
I have one question…
Riser Board: PCI Riser Board with 2 PCI-X ports
I know the PCI-X is backward compatible with PCI (a PCI-X card in a PCI slot) although it will talk down. Is the reverse true...PCI card in a PCI-X slot? Will it even fit?
Eventhough I said that I have no need for a DMZ, I am thinking of future proofing and putting a 3rd NIC in. However, the only slots I have available are PCI-X and the only NIC cards I have are PCI. Would I be better off finding a Intel Pro 1000 PCI-X card on Ebay cheap and using that?
TIA,
John
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You could try calling Dell and see if they'll answer the question directly. I can't comment too much on the hardware, but you should be able to pick those things up pretty cheap in the future if you need them.
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Thank you for the reassurance guys!
I have one question…
Riser Board: PCI Riser Board with 2 PCI-X ports
I know the PCI-X is backward compatible with PCI (a PCI-X card in a PCI slot) although it will talk down. Is the reverse true...PCI card in a PCI-X slot? Will it even fit?
Eventhough I said that I have no need for a DMZ, I am thinking of future proofing and putting a 3rd NIC in. However, the only slots I have available are PCI-X and the only NIC cards I have are PCI. Would I be better off finding a Intel Pro 1000 PCI-X card on Ebay cheap and using that?
TIA,
John
Check the key configuration on the PCI cards you have. A dual-voltage card will fit into the PCI-X slot without issues. A 3v3 only card would not fit into a PCI-X slot keyed for 5v only, vice versa.
It is safer to get a Pro/1000 MT PCI-X card from Ebay cheap. The reason is that the onboard NICs might be riding off the PCI-X bus. Placing a 32bit/ 33MHz NIC in the PCI-X slot will force the entire bus to downgrade to 33MHz. i.e. You end up with 266MB/s of bandwidth for 3 GBe nics and quite possibly the SCSI controller as well.
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Thank you for the reassurance guys!
I have one question…
Riser Board: PCI Riser Board with 2 PCI-X ports
I know the PCI-X is backward compatible with PCI (a PCI-X card in a PCI slot) although it will talk down. Is the reverse true...PCI card in a PCI-X slot? Will it even fit?
Eventhough I said that I have no need for a DMZ, I am thinking of future proofing and putting a 3rd NIC in. However, the only slots I have available are PCI-X and the only NIC cards I have are PCI. Would I be better off finding a Intel Pro 1000 PCI-X card on Ebay cheap and using that?
TIA,
John
Check the key configuration on the PCI cards you have. A dual-voltage card will fit into the PCI-X slot without issues. A 3v3 only card would not fit into a PCI-X slot keyed for 5v only, vice versa.
It is safer to get a Pro/1000 MT PCI-X card from Ebay cheap. The reason is that the onboard NICs might be riding off the PCI-X bus. Placing a 32bit/ 33MHz NIC in the PCI-X slot will force the entire bus to downgrade to 33MHz. i.e. You end up with 266MB/s of bandwidth for 3 GBe nics and quite possibly the SCSI controller as well.
Perfect!!! Thank you so much. Off to Ebay I go. :)
John
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As i just posted in another thread, I have had problems with the 1750 OEM cdrom reading burned pfSense discs. I eventually had to upgrade to a slim CDRW to remedy the problem. Don't go banging your head against the wall and reburning CDs if you have strange lockups/read-errors on boot; it's likely the drives fault.
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As i just posted in another thread, I have had problems with the 1750 OEM cdrom reading burned pfSense discs. I eventually had to upgrade to a slim CDRW to remedy the problem. Don't go banging your head against the wall and reburning CDs if you have strange lockups/read-errors on boot; it's likely the drives fault.
I saw that thread when I was doing my research. Good to know…thank you. I have a spare slim drive from an IBM lying around collecting dust.
John
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On my old 1850 I also had problems with the CD drive (And even had problems with my external CD drive) - Ended up installing everything from a USB HDD.
Their latest server have fixed the issue now it seem though.