Budget 1U Rackmount with ECC and AES?

eroji

Looking for suggestions for a budget 1U rackmountable build with support for ECC and AES for $500 or less. Not sure if this is possible but would really appreciate some ideas.

wiretap

A used Dell 1U with a Westmere or newer Xeon would probably work. They are going anywhere from $150 and up depending what comes in them.

Guest

From the pfSense Shop:
pfSense Shop 1U XG-1540 ~$1600
Intel Xeon D-1540
AES-NI

pfSense shop 1U C2758 ~$1400
Intel Atom 8 Core C2758
AES-NI & Intel QuickAssist

Self made:
Supermicro Mainboard X10SLH-F Mikro-ATX LGA1150 ~$250
Supermicro 1U SC512 F-441B CSE-512F-441B ~$260
Intel Xeon E3-1231v3 Quad Core @3,1GHz ~$250
AES-NI & 3 PCIe Slots & 2 Intel GB LAN Ports & 1 IPMI
RAM & SSD or perhaps a SATA-DOM is needed

Supermicro 1U Barebone SuperServer SYS-5018A-TN7B
Intel Atom C2758 8 Core Board & Barebone
AES-NI & QuickAssist & 7 Intel GB LAN Ports & 1 IPMI Port
RAM & SSD & perhaps a SATA-DOM is needed

Supermicro 1U SuperServer 5018A-FTN4 SYS-5018A-FTN4
Intel Atom C2758 8 Core Board & Barebone
AES-NI & QuickAssist & 4 Intel GB LAN Ports & 1 IPMI Ports
RAM & SSD or perhaps a SATA-DOM is needed

Supermicro 1U Barebone SC505 203B ~$150
Supermicro Mainboard A1SRi-2558F ~$320
Intel Atom C2558 Quad Core
AES-NI & QuickAssist & 4 Intel GB LAN Ports & 1 IPMI Port
RAM & SSD or perhaps a SATA-DOM is needed

Supermicro Barebone SC510T-203B ~$160
Supermicro Mainboard A1SRM-LN7F-2358 ~$340
Intel Atom C2358 Dual Core
AES-NI & QuickAssist & 7 Intel GB LAN Ports & 1 IPMI Port
RAM & mSATA or SSD or perhaps a SATA-DOM is needed

I would trying a search on refurbished servers matching the following edge points;

not under 3,0GHz CPU clock (GHz is better then Cores)
Intel Xeon E31231v3 Quad Core @3,1GHz over all others or greater model
AES-NI and 1 free PCIe slot should be or some mSATA option
if not enough LAN ports are there buy an Intel Quad Port PT NIC
AES-NI & QuickAssist is better then Turbo boost

jimp

Don't discount the other "budget" option:

Any desktop/SFF style box (Like the lower cost ones from the pfSense store) + cheap rack shelf.

eroji

How will a i3 Haswell, for instance 4370 compare to something like a E3-1225 or 1230? Also for QuickAssist, I couldn't find any concrete information on what CPU has support for it.

Keljian

I can't answer your Xeon question, but the only platform that directly supports quick assist is the C2xx8 platform.

You can add quick assist cards later but they are quite expensive

wiretap

With that particular i3, you'll have half the cores and threads as the E3-1230, or half the cores but the same number of threads as the E3-1225. Single core performance will be marginally higher on the i3. But the added cores will bring a passmark score to almost double though.. so for the price, the Xeon will probably be a better choice. (based on looking at Ebay prices)

For the QuickAssist, I believe that may be dependent on a motherboard with a supported chipset. I can't find a good document on Intel ARC that really explains what is supported, but from some networking product manufacturer's, I've found these processors do support it and they look to be embedded. Intel Xeon E3-1125C/ E3-1105C/E3-1125C V2, Core i3-2115C/Pentium-B915C/ Pentium-B925C/Celeron-725C.

Example: http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/Gladden/DH8903/X9SKV-1125.cfm

Guest

How will a i3 Haswell, for instance 4370 compare to something like a E3-1225 or 1230?

Here is a link that compares both against. Intel Core i3-4370 vs. Intel Xeon E3-1231 v3
The main goal would be things such as;

double of cpu cores for the Xeon
Turbo modus on all cpu cores for the Xeon
internal L2 + L3 cache is double for the Xeon

Also for QuickAssist, I couldn't find any concrete information on what CPU has support for it.

In you initial post you were asking for two mainly things, that must or should be given, AES-NI and ECC RAM
and the QuickAssist Technology is one point on top of this, but not really inserted to pfSense at this time.
They are working on as I am informed, later it could be a little features that comes on top of all units that
are sold by the pfSense shop or has it plain integrated. It will be speeding up such things as crypto work,
compression workload.

I can't answer your Xeon question, but the only platform that directly supports quick assist is
the C2xx8 platform.

In the most new Intel CPUs AES-NI is working in and in some rarely cases also QuickAssist is
enabled also, but the most benefit from this Technology would be pointed to the "smaller" SoC
based platforms, but not only! There are two QuickAssist accelerator cards made by Intel.
Intel QuickAssist Technology

And on the bottom line of the pfSense shop offerings you would be able to rad the following
statement about it:
Future pfSense distributions will have support for QuickAssist. AES-NI support is included.
So I really thing it would be more important as we all can imagine at this point of time.

A SG-2440 or SG-4860 could also matching your needs and fitting your wishes.
But to answer this really you should tell us more about this point. ;)