All-in-one homeserver, advisable?
-
Agreed he should be sized while loaded - but he has
"I have 3 phones and <15 network devices (closer to 4 on average.)" He is not serving up to the 100k users a website.. Pretty sure that cpu is going to set there idle.. With a few cycles here and there when he loads up a page via apache or a call comes in..
It sure is not going to be pushing packets with a 2mbps/512Kb connection ;)
-
http://www.ebay.com/itm/SUPERMICRO-1U-2x-L5420-Xeon-QC-2-5GHz-8GB-250gb-Half-Depth-Server-X7DCA-L-/141411937842
add ESXI and 8g more memory? 10 seconds on ebay.
-
Looks better.
-
So I did get a virtualbox to run on that machine with Ubuntu server 14.04 LTS. Apache/Asterisk VM was impossible to setup through virtualbox (it failed trying to configure the CD.) Managed to transfer a configured appliance and got everything running.
pfsense works just fine. Right now, the VM usage on host is 15% in top (effectively just 7.5%.) Although even small tasks spike the usage to 100%.
This is the same for the asterisk/tf VM. Something like package configuration make the CPU usage go crazy. And apart from that, passing through USB mobile broadband dongles seems to be such a pain (hasn't worked yet.)The only problems I am facing are, ZFS complaining of low memory on startup (potential problem.) High average loads (where ubuntu just refuses to give me load data at boot time.) and high CPU usage of the asterisk VM even on idle (around 40% I don't know if it'll scale well under load.)
What are the problems I am likely to face if I move apache and asterisk to the ubuntu host? I'll only open ports to apache.
Possible solutions that I thought of were to move apache to an OpenVZ container. Perhaps set up VPN access to apache on the VM host.
Apologies in advance. I realize that I am going offtopic now. I appreciate the help anyway.
PS: wcrowder: Used servers are a little hard to find where I live. ebay has few option. Other websites have used servers being sold in cities where there are more IT related companies. … and I am a college student, I'd need to save money for a few months before I could buy something worth $100. T_T
That said, I have back up options. An E3-1230v3 that sits idle (or is switched off) most of the time, and a C2D E4300 that's just lying somewhere doing nothing. I am just trying to find a use for this weak machine. -
"(it failed trying to configure the CD.)"
What?? Why would apache or Asterisk need a CD??
As to ZFS - that can be completely ignored not even used..
-
"(it failed trying to configure the CD.)"
What?? Why would apache or Asterisk need a CD??
As to ZFS - that can be completely ignored not even used..
I couldn't install Ubuntu. It gave me apt-cdrom errors and the set up crashed. I had to make an appliance and then use it there.
Setting up mobile broadband is giving me a headache. For some reason everything works fine for some time, and then my dongles disconnect because they aren't getting echo responses over ppp. After which the dongles refuse to connect. I don't know if it is because of the USB passthrough or just because pfsense doesn't support my modem.
-
Sure its not powering down the USB ports when you haven't touched the machine for a while?
-
Sure its not powering down the USB ports when you haven't touched the machine for a while?
Oh my God. Thank you! That worked. I wouldn't have thought that Ubuntu was powering the device down in less than a minute! It's been running for 7/8 minutes now.
EDIT: Scratch that. It failed eventually, just took a little longer than before.
Here's the log
Sep 27 15:11:22 ppp: [opt1_link0] LCP: no reply to 4 echo request(s) Sep 27 15:11:32 ppp: [opt1_link0] LCP: no reply to 5 echo request(s) Sep 27 15:11:32 ppp: [opt1_link0] LCP: peer not responding to echo requests Sep 27 15:11:32 ppp: [opt1_link0] LCP: state change Opened --> Stopping Sep 27 15:11:32 ppp: [opt1_link0] Link: Leave bundle "opt1" Sep 27 15:11:32 ppp: [opt1] Bundle: Status update: up 0 links, total bandwidth 9600 bps Sep 27 15:11:32 ppp: [opt1] IPCP: Close event Sep 27 15:11:32 ppp: [opt1] IPCP: state change Opened --> Closing Sep 27 15:11:32 ppp: [opt1] IPCP: SendTerminateReq #6 Sep 27 15:11:32 ppp: [opt1] IPCP: LayerDown Sep 27 15:11:34 ppp: [opt1] IFACE: Down event Sep 27 15:11:34 ppp: [opt1] IFACE: Rename interface ppp1 to ppp1 Sep 27 15:11:34 ppp: [opt1] IPV6CP: Close event Sep 27 15:11:34 ppp: [opt1] IPV6CP: state change Stopped --> Closed Sep 27 15:11:34 ppp: [opt1] IPCP: Down event Sep 27 15:11:34 ppp: [opt1] IPCP: LayerFinish Sep 27 15:11:34 ppp: [opt1] Bundle: No NCPs left. Closing links... Sep 27 15:11:34 ppp: [opt1] IPCP: state change Closing --> Initial Sep 27 15:11:34 ppp: [opt1] IPV6CP: Down event Sep 27 15:11:34 ppp: [opt1] IPV6CP: state change Closed --> Initial Sep 27 15:11:34 ppp: [opt1_link0] LCP: SendTerminateReq #2 Sep 27 15:11:34 ppp: [opt1_link0] LCP: LayerDown Sep 27 15:11:36 ppp: [opt1_link0] LCP: SendTerminateReq #3 Sep 27 15:11:38 ppp: [opt1_link0] LCP: state change Stopping --> Stopped Sep 27 15:11:38 ppp: [opt1_link0] LCP: LayerFinish Sep 27 15:19:07 ppp: Multi-link PPP daemon for FreeBSD Sep 27 15:19:07 ppp: Sep 27 15:19:07 ppp: process 90236 started, version 5.7 (root@pf2_1_1_i386.pfsense.org 08:21 15-Aug-2014) Sep 27 15:19:07 ppp: [opt1_link0] Link: DOWN event Sep 27 15:19:07 ppp: [opt1_link0] LCP: Down event Sep 27 15:19:07 ppp: [opt1_link0] LCP: state change Stopped --> Starting Sep 27 15:19:07 ppp: [opt1_link0] LCP: LayerStart Sep 27 15:19:07 ppp: [opt1_link0] Link: reconnection attempt 1 in 3 seconds Sep 27 15:19:07 ppp: caught fatal signal term Sep 27 15:19:07 ppp: [opt1] IFACE: Close event Sep 27 15:19:07 ppp: [opt1] IPCP: Close event Sep 27 15:19:07 ppp: [opt1] IPV6CP: Close event Sep 27 15:19:07 ppp: waiting for process 10039 to die... Sep 27 15:19:08 ppp: waiting for process 10039 to die... Sep 27 15:19:09 ppp: [opt1] Bundle: Shutdown Sep 27 15:19:09 ppp: [opt1_link0] Link: Shutdown Sep 27 15:19:09 ppp: process 10039 terminated Sep 27 15:19:09 ppp: web: web is not running Sep 27 15:19:09 ppp: [opt1] Bundle: Interface ng1 created Sep 27 15:19:09 ppp: [opt1_link0] Link: OPEN event Sep 27 15:19:09 ppp: [opt1_link0] LCP: Open event Sep 27 15:19:09 ppp: [opt1_link0] LCP: state change Initial --> Starting Sep 27 15:19:09 ppp: [opt1_link0] LCP: LayerStart Sep 27 15:19:23 ppp: [opt1_link0] CHAT: The modem is not responding to "AT" at ModemCmd: label. Sep 27 15:19:23 ppp: [opt1_link0] MODEM: chat script failed -
Are those plugged directly into the computer? Could you try it with a powered usb hub?
(running low on ideas)
-
Are those plugged directly into the computer? Could you try it with a powered usb hub?
(running low on ideas)
Don't have access to one right now. And I don't think that could be the problem (the dongle LED wouldn't be ON if it was powered down, right?) Anyway, I tried all the resources I found on setting the autosuspend mode off, nothing has worked so far. I checked the uptime the last time it failed, and that was about 16 minutes. The problem I am facing is similar to https://forum.pfsense.org/index.php?topic=45157.0
The dongle disconnects after sometime and it becomes impossible to reconnect it later (even removing and reinserting doesn't work.) When this happens, one of the PHP processes starts taking 40% CPU usage and must be killed manually for the system to work. It's just unreliable from that point onwards; I NEED to restart it to make the mobile internet or anything related to pfsense work.At the moment, I am using pfsense (64 bit) on VMware Workstation on a Windows 8.1 host and everything seems to be working perfectly. The link has been up for 40ish minutes and hasn't failed. I can remove the dongle as I wish, disconnect and reconnect without reboots.
Could it just be that the dongle doesn't work well with 32 bit pfsense? Maybe I should test 32 bit pfsense on VMware or perhaps just give up on this :/ -
It could be that the port just isn't pushing enough power on its on. I've experienced that many times with usb devices.
-
I would suspect some issue with the USB pass through to the VM. It's probably timing out somewhere. Maybe to save resources it only represents the USB device when it sees call to it. There could be many reasons. The USB dongle and pfSense really aren't designed/tested to operate in this way so you may be up against a insolvable issue.
Steve
-
I fixed the problem by disabling ACPI and APM but that still didn't allow me to disconnect and reconnect the dongles. Frustrated from that and the extraordinarily high idle load values (>1 on Ubuntu and 0.7 in pfsense,) I decided not to go ahead with this. Moreover my temperatures seemed to be monotonically increasing in an air conditioned room.
I am getting better resource utilization under VMware workstation (it idles at 1% usage.) For now this works.As far as the netbook is concerned. I just cannot run the firewall and server on it simultaneously if I want isolation. Perhaps a chrooted environment / jail was my best option; I don't have the patience to deal with that for now. Maybe I should have just stuck with not trying to isolate it anyway. The netbook might be repurposed as a media server / HTPC later.
Note: I tried to get ESXi 3.5 to work on it (last version that supported 32 bit machines) but it threw a PSOD before I could install it.
-
Well - I didn't see that coming. (-;
I'd try to find a abuse celeron dual core laptop with some missing keys cracked screen, bad battery etc that is useless to the unimaginative person who owns it… Grab it and install Your things there. Actually - There are probably i7 laptops like this by now that people will almost pay you to take off their hands.
-
Well - I didn't see that coming. (-;
I'd try to find a abuse celeron dual core laptop with some missing keys cracked screen, bad battery etc that is useless to the unimaginative person who owns it… Grab it and install Your things there. Actually - There are probably i7 laptops like this by now that people will almost pay you to take off their hands.
Hard to find them online :S I found dual core servers for around 200 USD on ebay. I have a laptop sitting around with a 32 processor and Vt-x and a C2D E4300 desktop as alternatives.
I might keep the netbook as a dedicated pfsense firewall. The other servers can reside in the workstation, they don't really need high availability. If I could somehow disable the LEDs in fans and power / HDD LEDs, I might be able to sleep in the same room! The power footprint may not be as high as I am imagining, I should really just measure it.
-
Using my workstation as a router/firewall was becoming cumbersome, with all those lights and stuff. I ended up moving it back to my netbook, only this time I used jails. Apparently the main features of jails are performance and security: http://www.bsdnow.tv/tutorials/jails so it seemed like the perfect choice for me.
Everything works perfectly now. My load values are actually lower than 1.5 now! And temperatures actually decrease when the machine is idle and/or air conditioned.
I would've liked to put the jails in a DMZ but that just can't be done I guess. There is no way to add NICs and the VLAN feature on my ADSL router seems buggy. I really should get some new networking hardware.
-
Interesting. So what are you running in the jails and what is hosting, FreeBSD?
Steve
-
Interesting. So what are you running in the jails and what is hosting, FreeBSD?
Steve
Host is pfsense and the jails run FreeBSD. I don't think an alternate setup is possible. I believe pfsense can't run in a jail, and jails cant run anything but FreeBSD.
I have a guest with asterisk, and another with apache/transmission/samba.
