Question about hardware
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Hello, I recently purchased a SFF system that I will be using for pfSense. The system specs are as follows:
HP-t5470 with Intel Atom N280
2Gb Ram
2G Flash drive (with pfSense installed)
1 onboard NIC 10/100/1GbE (Broadcom)
dual port NIC 10/100/1GbE (either intel or Broadcom)This was purchased off ebay, so I do not know the exact specs of the ram. I am planning on putting in 4Gb ram just to be safe and swapping out the 2G flash drive for a 40Gb Sata drive or potentially an SSD.
Are there any other suggestions that anyone can make to improve this system to ensure that I won't have any issues with it? This will be used as the router/firewall for a Verizon Fios 75Mb connection.
Thank you
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It seems fine as it is. You don't really need the extra RAM as with that CPU you likely don't want to run Snort or other CPU heavy packages that would use the extra memory anyways. The CPU should be fast enough to firewall/NAT your connection, though I can't remember seeing any benchmarks for the single core Atoms.
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Okay, so I will just look at moving the install to a sata drive since I was reading that they perform better since pfSense will be able to do more writes it a standard HD than a SSD/Flash.
I know the seller advertised that it was capable of a 545Mb bandwidth throughput when in router mode. Truthfully that doesn't mean a whole lot to me since I am new to all this. But as long as it does what it needs to do then I am happy. Maybe down the road when my experience increases I will look at actually building a new system for it. This was all part of a new network I am putting together for a house that I am moving into and wanted a router available for when we first move in and I didn't want to have to use any more of the off the shelf commerical routers since I haven't been impressed with them these last few years.
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I would expect that CPU to be capable of something closer to ~450Mbps of firewall/NAT. Much faster than 75Mbps anyway.
If that flash drive is running the embedded (NanoBSD) version of pfSense then you don't need to worry about disk writes or drive speed since it runs almost entirely from RAM. Check the platform type on the pfSense dashboard.
Steve
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http://pages.ebay.com/link/?nav=item.view&alt=web&id=251815636232
That's a link to the system. As long as it is enough to handle from 75-105 or whatever the next package up is then I am good with that I guess. I am just hoping I don't have any crazy issues like other people have had with UPNP that I have been reading other people have been experiencing.
Once I receive it I will check it out but I won't be able to hook it up and fully test it until I get back to the states end of next month and then have to wait for them to turn on the service at the house.
Thank you for the help.
I would expect that CPU to be capable of something closer to ~450Mbps of firewall/NAT. Much faster than 75Mbps anyway.
If that flash drive is running the embedded (NanoBSD) version of pfSense then you don't need to worry about disk writes or drive speed since it runs almost entirely from RAM. Check the platform type on the pfSense dashboard.
Steve
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Well the seller states:
PfSense 2.2 (Final) Release Embedded Install w/ VGA output
So that's almost certainly a Nano install (since the embedded kernel full install does not have VGA output) but it may have been modified by the seller. Just check yourself when you get it.
Steve
