Hardware recommendation for homeuse
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@stephenw10 @Babiz Thanks for your input. As you said I don't have anything without it's own power adapter nor do I foresee getting one in the near future.
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Unless you were going to put in a lot of camera's or AP - you can just use the POE ejectors.. Sure its always nice to have poe on your switch for future proofing, etc.. But unless you have current or real near future need of adding some poe stuff.. Save the money and use injector if you add some poe device.
I want to add some camera's - when that happens I might get a poe switch to connect them all too..
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I’m currently using this switch as a cost effective VLAN capable device:
https://www.zyxel.com/au/en/products_services/5-Port-8-Port-Web-Managed-Gigabit-Switch-GS1200-5-GS1200-8/
Interested to hear what others think about it.
I’ve also had a HPE 1820 PoE+ switch . Costs more but since they consider it enterprise (small business) it comes with limited lifetime warranty. I had HP replace one (faulty port) - no questions asked - and the replacement unit came with UPS express next day. Thats pretty good for a 200$ device.
I’ve also had to make a decission between PoE injectors and PoE switch for cameras. At the end i went for a low budget entry level NVR (Hikvision) for the following reasons:
- comes with 4x PoE ports (more ports available)
- will fit a 3.5” HDD for centralised recording
- saves you the $$$ for on-camera microSD cards
- separates the cameras from the rest of your network
After all, for the same price of a PoE switch, i got more functionality with the NVR.
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@jagradang said in Hardware recommendation for homeuse:
HP N36L
I’ve had a similar setup with Esxi and you may be able to get away with your 2GB (4 would be better).
- 1VM with 1GB for pfsense
- 1VM with 1GB running unifi controller and pihole
If you do have a NAS (QNAP, Synology with x86 CPU) you could run the free Version of Nakivo and Backup your VM’s automaticaly to the NAS.(max 2 VM’s for the free version)
Nakivo works quite well using VM snapshots... if you stuff sonething up, you can roll back the entire VM...If your Pfsense only has 1GB of RAM I wouldnt run snort...
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@gcu_greyarea said in Hardware recommendation for homeuse:
@jagradang said in Hardware recommendation for homeuse:
HP N36L
I’ve had a similar setup with Esxi and you may be able to get away with your 2GB (4 would be better).
- 1VM with 1GB for pfsense
- 1VM with 1GB running unifi controller and pihole
If you do have a NAS (QNAP, Synology with x86 CPU) you could run the free Version of Nakivo and Backup your VM’s automaticaly to the NAS.(max 2 VM’s for the free version)
Nakivo works quite well using VM snapshots... if you stuff sonething up, you can roll back the entire VM...If your Pfsense only has 1GB of RAM I wouldnt run snort...
I decided against using the N36L as it won't really be future proofed and the cost involved to get it up and running wouldn't justify the end. The comments on this topic have definitely been really helpful though!!
I'm currently looking at either purchasing a prebuilt pfsense unit from aliexpress (some good units on there from one of the links posted above) or sourcing the components and using it as a mini project to have a play with. Going the dedicated hardware for pfsense rather than the esxi option now. Been reading through some other topics on here an google and it might not be worth the extra effort (and reliability).
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If your going to build something yourself, i might be a good idea to look at some second hand parts, for instance from Supermicro.
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If you like reliability you could get one of the negate appliances with the benefit of a purpose built platform and also supporting the project. I'd personally go for the 5100 as it has an intel CPU and no fan. However, for home use I think the price is prohibitive and I can see the appeal of the chinese mini PC's you mentioned.
Even then I'd recommend going down the virtual path. I currently run my ESXi environment on an i5 with 8GB of RAM and a SSD.
It quickly turned out that most of the resources simply go to waste.
For my 50/20 connection all I need is 1 core and 1GB of RAM. Since then I have added another core as I have 4 IPSEC Tunnels and inbound OpenVPN connection.
Initially I was reluctant about running pfsense virtual but gave it a shot anyway. In the beginning I used vt-d to pass through physical NICS into pfSense, but now I just use vmxnet3 without passthrough. There is no (noticeable) performance penalty.
As I mentioned before - the advantages of going virtual is that you can better utilise your hardware by running other "Always ON" services on the same host. In addition I can scale pfSense resources up/down quickly as required by adding RAM and CPU as I need. Since I'm still learning pfSense and other software the virtual environment has another advantage. I can quickly stop and start different pfSense instances to try out various scenarios and thanks to vmware snapshots role back if required.If all you need is a physical appliance to run pfsense you could go with a small Atom based appliance at 7W -15W. However, once you go larger with a custom build the power consumption will definitely go up and in my setup I was wasting a large amount of resources and energy (despite CPU power management)...
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@gcu_greyarea you have tempted me back into the esxi option. I have a dell optiplex 3040 which i don't really use much so tempted to switch that to esxi, convert the existing win 10 on it to virtual and add a dual nic. Just need to work out what its idle power is so i can decide if it will be expensive to run or not. Just going to buy a power meter to gauge how much it uses in its current state.
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@jagradang said in Hardware recommendation for homeuse:
@gcu_greyarea you have tempted me back into the esxi option. I have a dell optiplex 3040 which i don't really use much so tempted to switch that to esxi, convert the existing win 10 on it to virtual and add a dual nic. Just need to work out what its idle power is so i can decide if it will be expensive to run or not. Just going to buy a power meter to gauge how much it uses in its current state.
Please report back on your power meter readings at idle. I would be interested in the results.
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If your Dell optiplex 3040 has the i5 CPU (Core i5-6500) then you"ll have 4 physical cores which give you 12 Ghz for ESXi. That's more than sufficient to run pfSense, Unifi controller & Windows 10.
TDP for this CPU is 65W but for your use case it'll probably be lower.https://ark.intel.com/products/88184/Intel-Core-i5-6500-Processor-6M-Cache-up-to-3-60-GHz-
If you can afford/justify the expense you could get a UPS instead of a power meter. Go for the cheapest pure sine wave UPS with an LCD Display.
(e.g. CyberPower CP1000PFCLCD PFC Sinewave UPS System)The LCD Display will give you a reading of consumed power (in Watts) which is close enough. A power meter would be more accurate, but with a UPS you can safely shut down your ESXi host.
There's a NUT Client foe ESXi which will safely shut down the VM's and ESXi host once a low threshold is reached..... -
@jagradang Hello, I want to advice you, if you think to buy a Multimeter, You will consider one with clamp, for make safe, easy and clean measure, without messing around the metal case lol , aiso you will check grounding connection on your outlet AC power source and cable, finally you'll be safe. :D
On the market , there is many kind of "clamp multimeter" and maybe you don't need more expansive tool, but almost accurate for measuring energy flow (like Ampere scale from 1-5 milliAmps to 16-25 Amps) around 20 bucks is enough I think.
Also I'm electrican for job, so I'm feel to write about this kind of stuff is my pleasure and safety rules in my job is an essential part.
Well only for said this I'm go to bananas sorry for my poor english writing.In conclusion, according to me, one other way to check power absorbing is. looking at your Electricity Bill counter/meter device and get some Electricity Bill Calculator to figure it out.
For example : when you take note of counter number above meter, and take it again after exactly one hous, well you get some kilowatts/hours number by difference.
Bill meter if you don't know, is Some kind of "pulse" counter and basically one KW/hrs is a defined amount of pulses (may be change from region to region and type/model of meter) and more fast pulses/blinks equals to more energy absorbing in real time.
So energy provider can remotely read your amount of kw/hrs generated trough time and other data transmitted from your root power meter (usually placed outside of bulding on wall or under defined technical room among same others meters) , indeed you can also check this easy way if you are householder and paid energy bills.Regards.
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Just buy a power consumption meter.
You need measurement on a daily/weekly basis, not spot measurements
As for the ups... Its nice, however consumes electricity and it won't show total consumptionAs for using a clamp meter or a multimeter for power measurements, well, leave that to profesional electricians. Definitely not worth the hassle/danger.