Lanner FW-7551
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Interesting that the Marvell NICs are using the igb driver.
Why were you installing to the CF card from USB rather than writing a Nano image to it directly?
Steve
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Interesting that the Marvell NICs are using the igb driver.
Why were you installing to the CF card from USB rather than writing a Nano image to it directly?
Steve
I'm pretty sure this is the same hardware as the SuperMicro boards; it's got i354 NICs with a Marvell PHY.
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That would explain it.
Steve
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Why were you installing to the CF card from USB rather than writing a Nano image to it directly?
A few reasons:
1. Since I wanted to test out the hardware to see if various pfSense versions would even work, the live USB-based install was simplest.
2. The CF card I'm using is perfectly capable of handling read/write cycles like a regular hard disk over any reasonable lifetime.
3. I wasn't sure if there were any differences in the nanoBSD versions beyond using ramdisk for logging, etc and the hardware I'm using is closer to a full blown x64 server than an embedded device, so I thought I'd stick with the standard version.
4. I plan to switch to using an SSD once the mounting kit arrives, so this setup is easier to dd from the CF card to the SSD should I decided to do that instead of a full reinstall.
5. There aren't any 32GB nanobsd images, and I didn't want to mess with having to expand partitions, etc. -
Interesting that the Marvell NICs are using the igb driver.
I had the same thought.
I'm pretty sure this is the same hardware as the SuperMicro boards; it's got i354 NICs with a Marvell PHY.
I can try to interrogate the NICs a little more when I have time, but something along those lines was my assumption as well.
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should have been better if theres an msata slot…is 350 including shipment?
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should have been better if theres an msata slot…is 350 including shipment?
Maybe, but it has a standard SATA slot, and 2.5" SATA drives are easier to come by.
It was $340 + ~$15 shipping.
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These Lanner boxes look like they be what ive been looking for.
asalyer i'm wondering what made you choose the FW-7551 over the FW-7525 as they appear to have the same CPU (however it doesn't look like all the features are exposed) and is fanless -
asalyer i'm wondering what made you choose the FW-7571 over the FW-7525 as they appear to have the same CPU (however it doesn't look like all the features are exposed) and is fanless
These are all brand new. I don't think the FW-7525 was available when I made this purchase a month+ ago. At least I didn't see it. But you are correct that it does look similar. And the fanless design would be a nice touch for q quiter system (saving you the trouble of modding the fan like I've had to do).
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These are all brand new. I don't think the FW-7525 was available when I made this purchase a month+ ago. At least I didn't see it. But you are correct that it does look similar. And the fanless design would be a nice touch for q quiter system (saving you the trouble of modding the fan like I've had to do).
might have to get prices on all of these models. how did you place your order? i dont see anywhere on their website to do this.
looks like the FW7571 uses the 4-core cpu and the FW7573 uses the 8 core both appear to have the PCI-E slot exposed aswell for anyone that needs it. its good to see one manufacturer having a full rage like this.
assuming the FW7573 is a C2758 cpu i wonder how it would compare to supermicro or the box sold by pfsense -
assuming the FW7573 is a C2758 cpu i wonder how it would compare to supermicro or the box sold by pfsense
Because it's not sold by us, it's definitely incomparable.
1 - Ours is fully-tested hardware that will be comprehensively tested on every future release for the lifetime of the hardware, so you can upgrade with confidence. Also points to a hardware-specific image for upgrade purposes, so you get the best tweaks available for a specific hardware platform.
2 - Ours includes support, comes pre-installed, and you can buy it on our website right now and it'll ship same or next business day depending on order timing. With Lanner, you're going to be jumping through hoops with a sales person trying to buy a box. Then you get it, have to install it yourself, assign the NICsI'm sure it's a cheaper box in the immediate purchase cost, but:
- what's your time worth?
- what's that lowered risk of breaking your network worth?
- what's the potential for increased performance, or at least the assurance of ongoing settings appropriate to maximum performance with that piece of hardware, worth?
To a home user, maybe not so much. If you're doing anything remotely serious, it's easy to put numbers on it where paying more is ultimately cheaper (unless you consider your time worth $0, and put a $0 cost on downtime).
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@cmb:
Because it's not sold by us, it's definitely incomparable.
1 - Ours is fully-tested hardware that will be comprehensively tested on every future release for the lifetime of the hardware, so you can upgrade with confidence. Also points to a hardware-specific image for upgrade purposes, so you get the best tweaks available for a specific hardware platform.
2 - Ours includes support, comes pre-installed, and you can buy it on our website right now and it'll ship same or next business day depending on order timing. With Lanner, you're going to be jumping through hoops with a sales person trying to buy a box. Then you get it, have to install it yourself, assign the NICsI'm sure it's a cheaper box in the immediate purchase cost, but:
- what's your time worth?
- what's that lowered risk of breaking your network worth?
- what's the potential for increased performance, or at least the assurance of ongoing settings appropriate to maximum performance with that piece of hardware, worth?
To a home user, maybe not so much. If you're doing anything remotely serious, it's easy to put numbers on it where paying more is ultimately cheaper (unless you consider your time worth $0, and put a $0 cost on downtime).
for all these reasons and just to support the pfsense project i would much rather buy direct from pfsense/ESF (the form factor looks ideal for me as well) but i can't justify an 8 core system for a firewall at home. If a 2 core box with intel NICs was offered by pfsense/ESF for a reasonable price I would be ordering it straight away.
The T40E2 looks like step backwards for me as im currently using a microserver N40L.
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@cmb:
assuming the FW7573 is a C2758 cpu i wonder how it would compare to supermicro or the box sold by pfsense
2 - Ours includes support, comes pre-installed, and you can buy it on our website right now and it'll ship same or next business day depending on order timing. With Lanner, you're going to be jumping through hoops with a sales person trying to buy a box. Then you get it, have to install it yourself, assign the NICs
For what it's worth, I've never had any issues ordering from Lanner, though their shipping is sometimes a bit slow because they rarely have everything I want in stock. Where they fall short compared to you guys, to your points, is on post-sales support.
I'd have bought from you guys if you had hardware that would have met my needs. Instead I'll just have to stick with my support agreement. Consider this a request to build out the list of supported platforms, both for home and for business uses.
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might have to get prices on all of these models. how did you place your order? i dont see anywhere on their website to do this.
You just need to email the Lanner sales address and work directly with a sales person via either email or phone. It was fairly painless, but it does require interacting directly with another human, and tehre lead time is often a few weeks. ;-)
For future reference, I'd be interested to see prices on the other units as well, so if you get them, can you repost them here?
You can generally buy the units bare bones (as I did) and then add your own RAM, SSD, etc, or Lanner can ship the unit with the extras pre-installed for additional cost.
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@cmb:
Because it's not sold by us, it's definitely incomparable.
1 - Ours is fully-tested hardware that will be comprehensively tested on every future release for the lifetime of the hardware, so you can upgrade with confidence. Also points to a hardware-specific image for upgrade purposes, so you get the best tweaks available for a specific hardware platform.
2 - Ours includes support, comes pre-installed, and you can buy it on our website right now and it'll ship same or next business day depending on order timing. With Lanner, you're going to be jumping through hoops with a sales person trying to buy a box. Then you get it, have to install it yourself, assign the NICsI'm sure it's a cheaper box in the immediate purchase cost, but:
- what's your time worth?
- what's that lowered risk of breaking your network worth?
- what's the potential for increased performance, or at least the assurance of ongoing settings appropriate to maximum performance with that piece of hardware, worth?
To a home user, maybe not so much. If you're doing anything remotely serious, it's easy to put numbers on it where paying more is ultimately cheaper (unless you consider your time worth $0, and put a $0 cost on downtime).
I potentially would have bough directly from pfsense/ESF, but I wanted a Rangeley Atom box for future proofing (and to support non-pfsense uses down the road if need be, the VT-X support, etc makes it a good general purpose microserver if I get to a place where I no longer need it as a firewall). If ESF sold a Rangeley box with 5 to 6 gigabit Ethernet ports in the $400 to $600 range, I probably would have gone for that. But the current ESF/pfsense hardware selections don't really seem all that state of the art or future proofed (e.g. virtualization support, AES-NI, Intel NICs, etc), at least in terms of desktop, non-rack mount hardware.
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We have one of each internally. We even have a 7551 with the 8-core CPU internally, and have had for months. Compared to Supermicro, Lanner ends up being higher cost, and more difficult to deal with. Their leadtimes are 8-10 weeks. Oh sure, YOU can get ONE faster than that, so not your problem, right?
If you ever wonder why I remain reluctant to release AES-NI as part of the generally-available pfSense releases, this thread, and people like "I potentially would have bought" asayler are why.
aus_guy: we are more than aware of this platform, and have a plan. I'm not discussing it in public.
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@gonzopancho:
We have one of each internally. We even have a 7551 with the 8-core CPU internally, and have had for months. Compared to Supermicro, Lanner ends up being higher cost, and more difficult to deal with. Their leadtimes are 8-10 weeks. Oh sure, YOU can get ONE faster than that, so not your problem, right?
I was just sharing my experience (which others may or may not find relevant) of the Lanner purchasing being not so bad, not trying to claim it was right for everyone. I also never suggested that Lanner was the be all and end all, just that I wanted something with a Rangeley chip and lots of gigabit ports for around $500.
@gonzopancho:
If you ever wonder why I remain reluctant to release AES-NI as part of the generally-available pfSense releases, this thread, and people like "I potentially would have bought" asayler are why.
I don't see what AES-NI support has to do with anything. Is it available in the official pfSense-branded hardware? What do I (and apparently, people like me, whatever that means) have to do with AES-NI support (or lack there of)? Not following you here… Again, I was just mentioning it as a nice feature to have on the hardware side just in case pfSense (or other software that you might want to run) supports it in the future.
gonzopancho, I only started this thread to offer up my experiences playing around with a potential pfSense platform to the wider community under the assumption that someone might find it helpful. I'm not trying to snipe anyone's business or start an argument. And I was only commenting on the officially available pfSense hardware as a potential buyer explaining why the existing offer's where inadequate for my purposes. Take it or leave it. You may very well have extensive and good reasons for not offering officially branded Rangeley/Lanner/>3 port gigabit hardware. I'm not debating that. Just suggesting how ESF might get my $500 (and, as long as I've been put in charge of a representing a type of person, the $500 of people like me ;) ) instead of Lanner/newegg in the future.
I'm happy to support the development of pfSense. That's why I purchased a Gold membership when I first started playing around with pfSense a month ago, and why I try to post information here that others might find helpful. I'm hoping to help contribute code, documentation, etc in the future as I become more familiar with the in and outs of the project. I also am in a position to need to purchase network hardware for various organizations on a fairly regular basis. I bought the Lanner board to experiment with one piece of potential hardware (and because I occasionally like the DIY vibe of bare-bones systems). I'm not claiming it's the best solution for large scale production networks, just that it made since for me as I get up to speed with pfSense. If ESF offers similar hardware in the future, I will certainly consider it as well, especially for production deployments.
I'm not entirety sure what prompted the pigeonholing in your previous post, but it seems unproductive to the wider goal of growing and supporting pfSense and the associated community... :-\
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The AES-NI support for AES-GCM (and the associated changes to IPSEC) are currently being developed.
Sorry, I was just reacting to "potentially" as "possibly, but possibly not".
Yes, Lanner will sell you one quickly.
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So I went ahead an put AES-NI (AES-GCM) in pfSense 2.2
I'm not entirety sure what prompted the pigeonholing in your previous post, but it seems unproductive to the wider goal of growing and supporting pfSense and the associated community… :-\
It takes money to run the project.
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Gonzo - let me just say on behalf of the Home users here - THANKYOU for putting AES-NI in pfsense 2.2
