I3 system with at least 4-5 gigabit ports. 1U preferred
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ok then I suppose get the Asus RS300 with Quad NIC onboard and two expansion slots for a theoretical max of 12 gigabit NICs. You also get remote management from this server opposed to the RS100. I just built two of the 1U boxes mentioned above with Corei3/4GBECC/6xIntel Gbit for just under $550. It's not reverse mountable, though. the RS300 is definitely a better buy if you would not be comfortable with ebay quad NIC like I purchased at 100/each.
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So which motherboard and 1U enclosure did you go for?
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So which motherboard and 1U enclosure did you go for?
If you mean me;
RS100 Barebones ~275
Corei3 2100 65watt ~120
Kingston 2x2GB KVR13E9/2I ~50
eBay Quad 1000 ~100Just built two of them for our new datacenter. No hot swap bays but they are in AHCI mode so you can actually swap a dead disk if you can inch out the server, remove the cover, and do your work. Just setup the proper amount of slack on your network cables and all is good.
Nice to see Intel PRO 1000 for all 6 NICs in Assign interfaces. Different MAC ranges so easy to identify, though.
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oh and 3 year warranty on everything is included…except the NIC ha. But I built two of them so it'll be fine. Maybbbbe an extra Quad from ebay wouldn't hurt. They look new anyways.
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That's PCIe or PCIX NIC ? Also do you have a pic of the CPU mounted? Will the factory CPU fan fit in that 1U enclosure?
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it's PCI-e. The riser is certainly a weird color.
The ASUS RS100 barebones comes with a 1U CPU cooler.
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You know of any reason why the motherboard will take only i3 and xeon processors and no i5 or i7 ? Techincally they should be compatible.
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You know of any reason why the motherboard will take only i3 and xeon processors and no i5 or i7 ? Techincally they should be compatible.
It's because the i3 CPUs support ECC RAM and the i5/i7 CPUs don't.
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So what if I install non-ECC RAM on this specific system? Will it still work or even boot?
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So what if I install non-ECC RAM on this specific system? Will it still work or even boot?
No idea, I don't own one.
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Check page 5 of this doc: http://cache-www.intel.com/cd/00/00/46/78/467819_467819.pdf
Even Intel don't have an straight answer about non-ecc or i5/i7 CPU.
edit:
Asus CPU support list -
Check page 5 of this doc: http://cache-www.intel.com/cd/00/00/46/78/467819_467819.pdf
Even Intel don't have an straight answer about non-ecc or i5/i7 CPU.
edit:
Asus CPU support listLooks pretty clear to me. They say that the i5/i7 doesn't support ECC.
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this is not what you are asking…but for this system I put the Corei3 with Non ECC RAM and it would not boot. waited an extra day for the ECC RAM to arrive that I ordered and it booted up immediately. same cas, speed, and density too. I guess you must use ECC with the motherboard. Either way, 4x2GB ECC would run you about $90-100.
If you think that at some point you would reuse the system, then get 4GB sticks to make sure it's not a total waste for getting above 8GB. If you want more than 4 cores, get the Xeon e3 CPU. If you go to geekbenches stats, the Intel Xeon E3-1240 V2 gets a GeekBench score of 11313, while the Intel Core i3-2100 gets GeekBench score of 5890. If you look deeper on the GeekBench site you can get encryption metrics for benchmark tests giving you an idea of CPU needs for things like VPN.
The E3-1230V2 is only $100 more, twice the power, twice the cores, twice the usability in the future. Up to you. I know mine will only ever be firewalls so I decided to get the Corei3-2100. The lower the number makes an easier proposal.
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and just look here:
http://browser.primatelabs.com/processor-benchmarksCheck out all of the Corei7 processors that rank above the E3-1240 V2. They cost more $$ and use TWICE the wattage.
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I think I will go for the Xeon. Since I will have 6 dedicated gigabit ports, I will install vmWARE ESXi and assign the dedicated ports to the different segments and move the domain controllers and exchange servers from the current i5 based vmWARE to the new environment as the Xeon will serve as a better processor and I could take advantage of the CPU cycles which might go to waste if I just had pfSense on it.
I suppose I can make my current i5 system a dedicated NAS server.
Thoughts?
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well this box has 1 PSU. maybe the asus rs300…but then again this exercise may go to waste on the saving $$ side when you get that case, etc. Also CPU affinity should be set for this pfsense install if it will be a VM. VM boxes are becoming easier to saturate as people are becoming more and more familiar with virtualization and loading up hosts....but not familiar enough with proper load balancing and resource monitoring. Sometimes you just need a separate box for your firewall to keep other services happy instead of taking down everything at once.
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Check page 5 of this doc: http://cache-www.intel.com/cd/00/00/46/78/467819_467819.pdf
Even Intel don't have an straight answer about non-ecc or i5/i7 CPU.
edit:
Asus CPU support listLooks pretty clear to me. They say that the i5/i7 doesn't support ECC.
My mistake, I should have said: …an straight answer about non-ecc or i5/i7 CPU support on C204. As stated in page 5 ”Not Supported” configurations may still boot