What about the new SuperMicro X10SDV-TP8F or other SM motherboard with Xeon D?
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I am looking into some heavy machinery that will handle 2 separate 1Gb connections (pretty soon 3) and I found the SuperMicro SYS-5018D-FN8T barebone to be quite appealing. I have a few servers on one line and a small network on another 1Gb line. Snort, pfblockerNG and OpenVPN everywhere. I am looking for a year I guess into the Atom Rangeley 2758 boards… and when I decided I have to buy one, as my current very very old Xeon is eating energy like crazy, it seems we have a new king: the Xeon D, and in this case the D-1518 (it's the xxx8 series, meant to replace the Rangeleys right? with 4C/8T, AES-NI, SpeedStep, 35W) totally overpowered. But I prefer to have more than less, and new rather than somehow oldish technology, Atom being around for quite a while.
And this barebone has also 10Gb SFP+ so it is future proof. From what I read I have no doubts it's capable of 10Gb, but can someone confirm? And very low consumption. It will be quite an expensive build for me, but the more I think about it, the more it makes more sense, seems in fact like a dream come true at around 800 USD for the whole barebone... Planning to throw in an 80GB Intel SSD, 2x8GB DDR4 ECC. Also hoping I will have the courage to get BGP... sometime. And a second, identical device for HA.
But. I can't find any definitive info about pfSense running on this board. Does anyone have any experience with it? Are there any problems with those D boards from SuperMicro, and with this one in particular? Please post any advice you seem fit, even if it's only about the Xeon Ds.
Thanks a bunch!
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You people are scaring me - I can't believe no one's got one for pfSense :D Or is there something wrong with this ideea?
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I have been thinking about the D-1540 for some time as the D-1518 is a bit sub-par, but I don't think it should pose any install issues.
http://www.servethehome.com/exclusive-intel-xeon-d-1518-benchmarks/
If you are planning for 3GB WAN routing then Atom 2758 will not be a good choice and the D-1518 comes close to it. Look into higher end Xeon (which you are doing) or i7. Discard i5 and the rest below from consideration.
I am looking to move my current i5-2500K system to a dedicated Media center and replace it with the D-1518. The i5 is working well but I do see it responding a bit slow to Snort (fully loaded), pfBlocker and Squidguard. Have tried clean base installs and it flies with simple packages but heavy processing packages like Snort needs the extra power for faster response that i5 is not able to deliver to my 50+ network devices. It has been working pretty well since last 5 years or so but now it's showing it's age as pfSense packages have evolved over time.
The initial cost for D-1540 is of course quiet high and the pay-off day may never come.
For 3 GB WAN routing, I presume the D-1518 may not be enough. Keep in mind that adding heavy loader packages will significantly increase client response times depending on how many simultaneous clients are being served by the box. Look into D-1540 if you have the $$ to spare.
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Yeah, figured that the Atom days are numbered so that's why I am asking. I think that the main difference between 151x and 154x (besides the obvious cache and cores) is related to TurboBoost and the higher frequencies, but at the cost of energy. I have around 10 devices and two servers (1 busy) for now.
So regarding Snort - if I am not mistaken we are still using the 2.x and not 3.x despite de name of the package. Can't check right now as I broke my VPN :D So of course being single threaded, one has to bump frequencies to increase performance. But Snort 3.x I read is an entirely different animal and I think the performance will explode (really hoping!) due to the increase number of cores/threads used. The D-1518 has 8 threads and D-1540/1541 16 threads, oh my. We have to see something here versus the old Snort, no matter how smaller the difference, at least for starters.
Thanks for sharing!
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I am looking into some heavy machinery that will handle 2 separate 1Gb connections (pretty soon 3)
Take a Xeon E3-12xx-v3 and 2 x 4 GB or 2 x 8 GB of RAM and you will be happy with that then!
An Intel i350 or i-354 NICs will do the rest job nice with a fast SSD, mSATA or M.2 SSD.and I found the SuperMicro SYS-5018D-FN8T barebone to be quite appealing I havea few servers on one line and a small network on another 1Gb line. Snort, pfblockerNG and OpenVPN everywhere.
A quad core Xeon E3 would be nice handling this and more if later needed.
I am looking for a year I guess into the Atom Rangeley 2758 boards… and when I decided I have to buy one, as my current very very old Xeon is eating energy like crazy,
The C2758 is not handling some 1 GBit/s WAN connections out of the box, but is delivering AES-NI and
Intel QuickAssist.it seems we have a new king: the Xeon D, and in this case the D-1518 (it's the xxx8 series, meant to replace the Rangeleys right? with 4C/8T, AES-NI, SpeedStep, 35W) totally overpowered. But I prefer to have more than less, and new rather than somehow oldish technology, Atom being around for quite a while.
Many 1 GBit/s WAN connections or less power using, what is the real goal here in the game?
And this barebone has also 10Gb SFP+ so it is future proof. From what I read I have no doubts it's capable of 10Gb, but can someone confirm? And very low consumption. It will be quite an expensive build for me, but the more I think about it, the more it makes more sense, seems in fact like a dream come true at around 800 USD for the whole barebone…
~900 € in Germany for that bare bone.
Planning to throw in an 80GB Intel SSD, 2x8GB DDR4 ECC. Also hoping I will have the courage to get BGP… sometime. And a second, identical device for HA.
Would be a nice assemble and matching well to that bare bone.
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Thanks for the intel! Well I am looking for both: performance and significant energy savings; this should happen when you replace an whole 2009ish Xeon(R) CPU L5420 server (eating ~ 150-200W) with a 2016 Xeon Broadwell one (I still prefer the D, much cooler, no fan needed, lower consumption) . The difference should be quite noticeable.
Also the price in Germany seems a bit high? Even if you look here http://www.thinkmate.com/system/superserver-5018d-fn8t a quite expansive website, fully configured with SSD, RAM it's about 1100EUR inc. taxes. Will wait and see because… I put everything on hold (if I may hijack my own thread) as I can't seem to make them work, the first two connections, WTF, https://forum.pfsense.org/index.php?topic=116770.0
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I have the pfSense XG-1540 that has the Xeon D in it. However, my pfSense stats page says this:
Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU D-1541 @ 2.10GHz
16 CPUs: 1 package(s) x 8 core(s) x 2 SMT threadspfSense uses SuperMicro for their servers. It actually came in a SuperMicro box and one of the ports launched into their config system.
The thing screams. I have it running Snort and serving as a DHCP server. I added the Chelsio SFP+ ports to it, but haven't used them yet. Was about to set it up when I get Comcast Gigabit Pro as they have an SFP+ port that will allow you to get the full 2 Gbps.
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Thanks for sharing, good to know there are Xeon Ds working fine out there and that pfSense also uses SuperMicro for some of their builds!
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Hi, just wanted to confirm that the Xeon Ds are one of the best surprises for me this year. And if there is something created for pfSense, those are it. Santa (Merry Christmas!) brought a X10SDV-6C+-TLN4F system with the Xeon D 1528 (it is the one with active cooling - the CPU should be fine with only a heatsink, but it also benefits the chips surrounding it too), 2x8GB DDR4 Reg. ECC, 1U rack case 200W PSU, and a SSD SATA DOM 64GB. My power usage dropped with a whopping 140W compared to the HP server I was using! And the CPU barely hits 8% load.
I have a problem with the onboard 10Gb NICs, but I will open a separate thread. Thank you for your thoughts on the matter, this platform really worth the money (all the hardware was priced at 1150 EUROs).
