Case and Motherboard
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right now I am using a dell gx240 with my pfsense setup with 1gb memory and Pentium 4 chip and 4 Ethernet interfaces. Can someone please let me know what case and motherboard combo thats consumes less energy and is smaller in size but has enough memory and Ethernet card that is comparable to my current setup. I am looking for recommendations on this . Thx
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Enough memory for what? What bandwidth do you have? What packages do you need? How many of those 4 interfaces do you need/use?
Have you read the hardware sizing guidance found from the pfSense home page? In short, you haven't provided anything like enough information for anybody to answer your question.
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sorry about that running squid packages with proxy filter and hapv. Also running openvpn for personal use and running multiple ipsec site to site tunnels and bandwidth is just 15mbs / 3mbs. The 4 ethernet interfaces are used inside interface and outside interface with a interface assigned to dmz and another for wireless lan. This is pretty much for home use but looking for smalling smaller and that takes less power.
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The hardware sizing guide suggests that just about anything will cope with that bandwidth, though you need more memory and processor power for the packages and VPN. Even then, a 1 GHz platform is likely to be more than enough.
Other than only having 3 interfaces an Alix system would do you, as would most of the FabiaTech range of firewall platforms.
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I am trying to look for pricing for FabiaTech FX5622 - VPN / Firewall Platform their site does not show any pricing.
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Because you're supposed to buy it through a reseller, not directly. If we knew where in the world you were located somebody may be able to provide suggestions of where to start looking.
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I am in the United States
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This looks interesting…... http://www.liantec.com/product/emboard/EMB-5940.htm
Can add daughter boards to it such as this one .....http://www.liantec.com/product/tbm/TBM-1442.htm#Application
"Onboard dual PCIe-based Intel Gbit Ethernet with auto-bypass function."
Dual PCIe Intel (82574L Gbit Ethernet controllers) with bypass function with relays on RJ45 connectors sounds interesting. There are several other daughter boards that have 4 X Gbit Intel controllers onboard. The 5940 emboard itself has 4 X Intel 82547 Gbit Ethernet on board, so we can end up with 4, 6 or 8 Intel 82547 PCIe Gbit Ethernet ports on board. Nice! The 5940 itself takes up to 3Gig ram and uses a mobile Core 2 Duo - this does two things - lowers power consumption because it is a laptop CPU and because it is an old outdated Chip its not going to be too expensive. I think a Core 2 Duo CPU would have sufficient power to run various packages and 3G ram is as much as we can use on 32 bit versions of PF.
Hey i just sold myself on this - going to get one and try it out.
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This looks interesting…... http://www.liantec.com/product/emboard/EMB-5940.htm
Can add daughter boards to it such as this one .....http://www.liantec.com/product/tbm/TBM-1442.htm#Application
"Onboard dual PCIe-based Intel Gbit Ethernet with auto-bypass function."
Dual PCIe Intel (82574L Gbit Ethernet controllers) with bypass function with relays on RJ45 connectors sounds interesting. There are several other daughter boards that have 4 X Gbit Intel controllers onboard. The 5940 emboard itself has 4 X Intel 82547 Gbit Ethernet on board, so we can end up with 4, 6 or 8 Intel 82547 PCIe Gbit Ethernet ports on board. Nice! The 5940 itself takes up to 3Gig ram and uses a mobile Core 2 Duo - this does two things - lowers power consumption because it is a laptop CPU and because it is an old outdated Chip its not going to be too expensive. I think a Core 2 Duo CPU would have sufficient power to run various packages and 3G ram is as much as we can use on 32 bit versions of PF.
Hey i just sold myself on this - going to get one and try it out.
"Any idea of the price of this? and the daughter boards?
This looks as good if not better than the jetway boards i was milling over! it looks as if they also provide the chip preinstalled? -
agree looks to be a good setup. However those mobile CPU's are quite pricey - i'm considering going second hand off Ebay for CPU.
I've had a quote of $305.00 for a sample board, $290 for 20+ boards and so on. So on the high side - but when mated with a used CPU the cost is reasonable for the performance - this setup should run rings around a Atom D525 - but then again the general consensus is a Core2 DUO CPU is overkill for a PF box…..... depends what you want to do with it i guess ...how much BW and which packages etc.
Myself - i like the option of buying very cheap low end CPU's to fit to this board and if i don't get the performance i need i can simply buy a more powerful used CPU for a few more bucks until i get the number crunching horsepower my setup needs - as well, over time the cost of these mobile CPU's will only come down as newer later generation models take over - so over time you could keep upgrading the CPU to get faster and faster performance for lower and lower cost.
This board only takes 3Gb RAM so that limits you to 32bit systems in reality.
the daughter board with 2 Intle Nics on board with bypass relays is $60.00 USD. The board with 4 x Intel Gb NICs is $70.00. They quote the case for the board as around $60.00.
I think this compares favorably with the Atom D525 1 U case barebones - best price I've seen for that is 344.50 USD online and it has an Atom on board that you cant change over time as it is soldered onto the Supermicro mother board. Looks like all up this solution is around $600.00 running with 3Gb Ram/HDD/T7100 Core 2 Duo (used)
They also have the mini ITX board (the 6M45N) which takes a Penryn series Core 2 Duo CPU and they have a nice 1U rack mount case for it. They quote $480.00USD for a sample 1U inc the 6M45N ITX board with 1 intel Gb NIC onboard + the daughter board with 4 Intel Gb NIcs (so 5 nics total)+ power supply in the 1U case, + 1 x 3.5" internal HDD tray or 2 x 2.5" HDD tray internal. Looks to be around $700 up and running with 4Gb Ram and HDD fitted. This looks to be the better value.
Only question is, do we really need the performance the Core 2 Duo penryn gives? hard to say til i deploy with the packages i want to run and see for myself.
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hmm the pricing of the liantecs are quite competitive, however the full setup of an ITX jetway and extras clocks in a good margin cheaper.
tho this is still an option for when i finally take the plunge, many thanks for the info however! -
as always buyer beware - I've heard a number of reports of jetways failing - Liantec is pricey but so is commell and any of the other industrial board makers - i cant afford a failure - where i live fuel is $8.00 a gallon ! so a trip to a clients site to repair/replace a board is expensive. Any savings on cheaper gear is lost if it flakes out early in its life so for me the Liantec is OK. Everyones situation will be different of course so it may not make sense to some.
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I've had (so far) no problem with Jetway, including a box that's been running 24x7 for a few years now.
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@Cry:
I've had (so far) no problem with Jetway, including a box that's been running 24x7 for a few years now.
Same for me.
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I am looking to buy a fabiatech FX5622 is anyone currently using this device with pfsense 2.0? how is the performance? Also I only see that http://linitx.com/ is the only store that is currently selling this device does anyone know any other sites that might carry this device?
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@Cry:
I've had (so far) no problem with Jetway, including a box that's been running 24x7 for a few years now.
Same for me.
Same here. Been working great for almost three years now and not a single problem with it.
Darkk
