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    This hardware look ok?

    Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved Hardware
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    • B
      bob76535
      last edited by

      I have been running pfsense 1.2.3-release for the last 5 years at our co-lo site and yesterday the hardware running it burned up. It was 100% rock solid from day 1 until death with a reboot every couple of years or so. I had it on a supermicro Atom D525 1u superserver with 4G of ram and an enterprise class HDD. I figured that I would replace it with something a little beefier so I ordered these:

      MB - http://www.amazon.com/Supermicro-Motherboard-Micro-DDR3-A1SRM-LN5F-2358-O/dp/B00O7AC5R0/ref=lh_ni_t?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=A29P93PKVXFSE3

      Chassis - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B007RV2W6U/ref=ox_sc_act_title_2?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=A29P93PKVXFSE3

      Ram - http://www.precision.com/product/Supermicro_2GB_DDR3_SDRAM_Memory_Module/1023436223

      Drive - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822236342

      Any reason that combo will not work well with the current pfsense release?

      I understood that the C2358 is made for communications use (I don't think we need a quad or octa-core with our 100/400 connection since a D535 handled it before), it has 4 Intel NICs on it, and 4G of ram is plenty as we were running Snort on it before with 4G and no issues.

      Am I missing anything?

      Thanks

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      • G
        grandrivers
        last edited by

        Supermicro A1SRM-2558F-B Intel Atom C2558/ DDR3/ SATA3/ V&4GbE/ MicroATX Motherboard & CPU Combo
        can be had cheaper

        SUPERMICRO SC505 203B  ports are front mount on this chassis

        pfsense plus 25.03 super micro A1SRM-2558F
        C2558 32gig ECC  60gig SSD

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        • B
          bob76535
          last edited by

          I looked at that one and I did not like the case requirements.

          I ordered this instead:

          C2550 MB - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813182914

          Case - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811152222

          Memory (4) - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148829

          Drive - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822236342

          Think that will be ok?

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          • A
            antillie
            last edited by

            I just installed pfSense on a Supermicro A1SRi-2758F (basically the C2758 version of your motherboard) and it screams.

            I wouldn't be surprised if you got gigabit throughput with just NAT and firewalling on the board you have. Installing other packages will of course affect your overall throughput.

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            • B
              bob76535
              last edited by

              That's good to hear.  We pretty much just use it as a transparent firewall (no NAT we have a /24 of public IPs) and intrusion detection so it should run well.

              Thanks

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              • E
                edwardwong
                last edited by

                @antillie:

                I just installed pfSense on a Supermicro A1SRi-2758F (basically the C2758 version of your motherboard) and it screams.

                I wouldn't be surprised if you got gigabit throughput with just NAT and firewalling on the board you have. Installing other packages will of course affect your overall throughput.

                Too expensive for me…...
                but as 2758 is a 8-core platform, you can put decent load on it without sacrificing performance, the bigger brother, C2750 has proven to be about 50% processing power of existing low end Xeon E3, so C2758 won't be too far away from this....

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                • A
                  antillie
                  last edited by

                  @edwardwong:

                  Too expensive for me…...
                  but as 2758 is a 8-core platform, you can put decent load on it without sacrificing performance, the bigger brother, C2750 has proven to be about 50% processing power of existing low end Xeon E3, so C2758 won't be too far away from this....

                  You got that a bit backwards, the C2758 is the more powerful version of the C2750 due to the inclusion of quick assist. Although both CPUs will easily push 1000 mpbs of routed and firewalled traffic. However once pfSense supports quick assist the C2358 will probably outperform the C2750 by a large margin and the C2758 will probably spank most Xeons. At the moment pfSense is leaving a huge amount of hardware acceleration on the table with regards to the high end Rangeley CPUs.

                  From what I understand Intel is working closely with the pfSence devs to get quick assist working but who knows how long it will take.

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                  • E
                    edwardwong
                    last edited by

                    @antillie:

                    @edwardwong:

                    Too expensive for me…...
                    but as 2758 is a 8-core platform, you can put decent load on it without sacrificing performance, the bigger brother, C2750 has proven to be about 50% processing power of existing low end Xeon E3, so C2758 won't be too far away from this....

                    You got that a bit backwards, the C2758 is the more powerful version of the C2750 due to the inclusion of quick assist. Although both CPUs will easily push 1000 mpbs of routed and firewalled traffic. However once pfSense supports quick assist the C2358 will probably outperform the C2750 by a large margin and the C2758 will probably spank most Xeons. At the moment pfSense is leaving a huge amount of hardware acceleration on the table with regards to the high end Rangeley CPUs.

                    From what I understand Intel is working closely with the pfSence devs to get quick assist working but who knows how long it will take.

                    I know it's not really apple-apple comparison….if you mean crypto applications, definitely C2758 wins, but for some other things not related to crypto, C2750 has Turbo Boost which might help a bit, I wish C2758 would have Turbo Boost as well so that it can be a full feature SoC

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                    • A
                      antillie
                      last edited by

                      To me single core turbo boost seems a little silly on an 8 core CPU. Surely anything you use on such a system will be multi-threaded. Otherwise you would have been better off with an i7.

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                      • ?
                        Guest
                        last edited by

                        Hi folks,

                        I know it's not really apple-apple comparison….if you mean crypto applications, definitely C2758 wins, but for some other things not related to crypto, C2750 has Turbo Boost which might help a bit, I
                        wish C2758 would have Turbo Boost as well so that it can be a full feature SoC

                        C2758 Rangeley = AES-NI and Intel QuickAssist
                        Better for building security appliances

                        C2750 Avoton = AES-NI and Turbo Boost
                        Better for building small servers

                        But for sure if the C2758 will be suited with Turbo Boost on top it would be the best SoC ever!

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                        • E
                          edwardwong
                          last edited by

                          @antillie:

                          To me single core turbo boost seems a little silly on an 8 core CPU. Surely anything you use on such a system will be multi-threaded. Otherwise you would have been better off with an i7.

                          Nope, turbo boost works on all core, not just a single core (like those normal desktop processors)

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                          • A
                            antillie
                            last edited by

                            I guess quick assist must be capable of some incredible things then. Otherwise there would be no point in the C2xx8 CPUs.

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                            • ?
                              Guest
                              last edited by

                              @antillie:

                              I guess quick assist must be capable of some incredible things then. Otherwise there would be no point in the C2xx8 CPUs.

                              Hmm, as I see it right the TurboBoost is better if you drive a server like apache, with some
                              high load peaks and the QuickAssist is better for security based appliances if the Code will be
                              optimized for using this integrated SoC option. So I will be going with C2xx8 former called
                              "Rangeley" this would be better for driving pfSense on it I think.

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                              • E
                                edwardwong
                                last edited by

                                Yes, QuickAssist will be better, as it supports more compression/encryption types.

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