pfsense on laptop?

[sdifox]

It's only $150 because it's so old. Going one generation newer gets you substantially faster and more efficient tech. Look for a PowerEdge R610/710 or an HP DL360G6/DL380G6 if you want rackmount and a bit more grunt. ML350G6 if you would prefer tower instead of rackmount. If it's only going to be running pfSense, those are severe overkill. Look for a single socket setup instead, like a PowerEdge R310 or DL180G6.

It's going to be a vm host so he can replace lots of the machines

 

[XavierMace]

Depending what those other VM's are doing, a single 6 core 5600 series Xeon will probably still be overkill.

That's with 7 VM's running. File/Media server, Domain Controller, WDS Server, vCenter Server, Sophos UTM, and a pair of sandbox workstations.

 

[SunnyD]

SunnyD; you make a good case for stepping up sooner than later. What is a good hardware platform to build on? Used servers with tons of memory are going dirt cheap.

Speaking of comfort zone: wtf am I getting myself into...?

edit: I need to know what to buy...

I built myself a dual LGA1366 machine with two L5639's when they were the hot thing on eBay. I managed to snag a Tyan S7012 that also game from ebay on the cheap. CPU's were about $70 each and I got a steal on the motherboard for around $125. The pricey part was the memory, but I ended up with 48GB of ECC DDR3 for decent prices.

edit again: Is this what I'm looking for? I checked that the processor is 64 bit, and it's only $150...


Dell PowerEdge 2950 server
CPU: 2x 5355 quad core Intel Xeon processors : 8 cores
RAM: 32Gb DDR2
Storage: 2x 73 GB SAS 3.5" HDDs; the backplane is SATA compatible
Perc5/i RAID
Network: 2x 1Gbps NICs
DRAC remote control card
Power: 2x PSU

As others mentioned, a 2950 is really long in the tooth at this point. It will be old, hot and loud. Yes, it will work, but you'd be better served by an R310 if you can't step up to an R610/710. Yes, you'll spend a little more up front, but it's actually worth it. The suggestions for the HP DL380's are also very good.

If you're patient enough with eBay, you should be able to find a steal on one of the older servers there, and they should out of the box be certified for either Hyper-V or ESXi.

 

[sdifox]

Depending what those other VM's are doing, a single 6 core 5600 series Xeon will probably still be overkill.

That's with 7 VM's running. File/Media server, Domain Controller, WDS Server, vCenter Server, Sophos UTM, and a pair of sandbox workstations.

Overkill is never a bad thing :whiste: Mind you I am doing plex which is all CPU.

 

[XavierMace]

I don't disagree on the overkill, that's why I've got 3 DL380's. LOL. I was just offering something a little closer in price to what he found.

I'm doing Plex as well. Even with multiple streams, I've never had it put a substantial load on the CPU.

 

[sdifox]

I don't disagree on the overkill, that's why I've got 3 DL380's. LOL. I was just offering something a little closer in price to what he found.

I'm doing Plex as well. Even with multiple streams, I've never had it put a substantial load on the CPU.

There is nithing worse than underspending. You just end up having to do it again soon. I think my R710 should last me a long while but now I think I should have gone with E5 2s.

 

[XavierMace]

I don't disagree. I'm just saying as of yet, I haven't been in a situation where 1 L5640 wouldn't be enough.

Of course you've also got higher overhead since you're running Hyper-V.

 

[sdifox]

I don't disagree. I'm just saying as of yet, I haven't been in a situation where 1 L5640 wouldn't be enough.

Of course you've also got higher overhead since you're running Hyper-V.

Oh I am not saying my machine is stressed, I just prefer it to be more than I need.

 

[mxnerd]

PowerEdge 2950 is going to cost you $23 per month in electricity. In 2 years it will be $552, not cheap.

https://blindcaveman.wordpress.com/...ction-strategy-electric-bill-1064-kw-savings/

 

[Genx87]

fyy0r, thanks for the detailed info on using pfsense on an old laptop; you've done what I hope to do with slightly newer hardware. I was expecting someone so say I was out to lunch for considering an i5 processor for a router. You don't mention a hard drive, and 512MB isn't a lot of ram... How big a USB stick are you using?

Genx87; I'll read up on Sophos. Thank you for that. My understanding of NIC thru USB is that it's very processor intensive; dual LAN may be too intense for old hardware (?). I've been looking at the ExpressCard option because it's tied directly to the bus.

btw; back on the mini-pc/thin client side, there's this cute little 4 LAN piece...
http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/B019Z8T9J0/ref=dp_olp_new?ie=UTF8&condition=new

I tried the laptop running Sophos but the USB nics I had werent recognized. So I use an old PC with an Intel E5200, 8GB of ram, and 60GB SSD. It usually consumes 3-5% CPU with about 10-12 devices hooked into it.

The reason why I suggest Sophos is it just works out of the box and is really simple.

 

[MrBill10]

As others mentioned, a 2950 is really long in the tooth at this point. It will be old, hot and loud.

You just described my wife...

I went looking for a 610 or 710; they're available but at 10x the price of the 2950. If I buy the old, hot, loud server I will have something to learn VMs, pfsense and everything else you fine people seem to understand so well. Power consumption doesn't concern me; my other pastime is building motorcycles and trucks, so I do a lot of fabrication & welding, I doubt I'd notice any difference on my bill. By next winter I should be able to upgrade again, after I reno the garage to include a equipment cabinet with dedicated power and some workspace.

The 2950 is sitting on my desk, Hyper-V Core is downloading with ESXi and pfsense queued up.

This is a very long way from what I had in mind; y'all are a bad influence...

Thanks

 

[sdifox]

Could have bought this

http://m.ebay.com/itm/171677037661?_mwBanner=1

 

[MrBill10]

Could have bought this

http://m.ebay.com/itm/171677037661?_mwBanner=1

Could have bought a laptop as well.. I'm in Alberta, presently hosting 3 evacuees from Ft Mac (and their dog). That box would end up costing over 500Cdn landed at my door, and the seller doesn't ship to Canada.

Everyone has to start somewhere... This way I get to learn some of the things you young fellas have already forgotten.

 

[sdifox]

Could have bought a laptop as well.. I'm in Alberta, presently hosting 3 evacuees from Ft Mac (and their dog). That box would end up costing over 500Cdn landed at my door, and the seller doesn't ship to Canada.

Everyone has to start somewhere... This way I get to learn some of the things you young fellas have already forgotten.

Oh didn't know you were Albertan. Thumbs up for helping out.

I shipped mine to my friends place in ny then he drove it up when he came over.

 

[MrBill10]

No worries. I updated my profile to include location; I didn't know I'd be here this long...

Shipping to CA sucks nuclear waste. Ordered a trim kit for a '64 Chevelle from the US: $164 for the parts and $128 for shipping. USD.

 

[sdifox]

No worries. I updated my profile to include location; I didn't know I'd be here this long...

Shipping to CA sucks nuclear waste. Ordered a trim kit for a '64 Chevelle from the US: $164 for the parts and $128 for shipping. USD.

My friend travels back and forth between nyc and toronto so I just ship to his nyc house. It is horrendous how expensive things are up here in igloo nation.

 

[SunnyD]

You just described my wife...

I went looking for a 610 or 710; they're available but at 10x the price of the 2950. If I buy the old, hot, loud server I will have something to learn VMs, pfsense and everything else you fine people seem to understand so well. Power consumption doesn't concern me; my other pastime is building motorcycles and trucks, so I do a lot of fabrication & welding, I doubt I'd notice any difference on my bill. By next winter I should be able to upgrade again, after I reno the garage to include a equipment cabinet with dedicated power and some workspace.

The 2950 is sitting on my desk, Hyper-V Core is downloading with ESXi and pfsense queued up.

This is a very long way from what I had in mind; y'all are a bad influence...

Thanks

:thumbsup: for making me laugh.

This one wouldn't have been bad at all, sure more expensive a bit but well worth it imho.

Let me know how well pfSense works out on Hyper-V. I have it running on ESXi and it's been a breeze. I wouldn't mind swapping out to Hyper-V though.

 

[sdifox]

:thumbsup: for making me laugh.

This one wouldn't have been bad at all, sure more expensive a bit but well worth it imho.

Let me know how well pfSense works out on Hyper-V. I have it running on ESXi and it's been a breeze. I wouldn't mind swapping out to Hyper-V though.

Been running pfSense under Hyper-V for over a year. No issues, well except for integration service reporting it is not working but it is. Known bug with BSD under Hyper-V

 

[antmanbee]

I've been running pfsense on a couple of different mini itx systems for the past 7-8 months and it is the best thing I've done with my network. Always works, never needs a reboot.
I have used an old amd e350 board first with 4G mem and a dual intel Gig NIC. I used a HP NC360T PCI express dual port server adapter which can be found on ebay or amazon for $10 to $15. The motherboard was pretty low power but I wanted more efficient so I got an embedded board with a J1800. A J1900 boardwould be fine too. Pop it in any case with an efficient low power power supply and you are in business.
I use the nanobsd pfsense build on a 2G usb stick. So the system has no hard drive, no DVD, no keyboard or mouse or monitor. It is all not needed because you only access it through a browser after the initial setup. It is set to restart after a power loss in the bios. I disabled all non needed motherboard functions including the onboard realtek NIC in the bios.
CPU usage and memory usage are minimal when checking in the pfsense interface.
I only have 100Mbps internet but this should be good for up to a Gig connection.

 

[MrBill10]

Thanks antmanbee. It seems many people successfully integrate pfSense into their network by combining an "old" computer with some old-fashioned seat time. It was what I started out trying to do...

I'm now learning how virtual machines can be so much fun...

Genx87; after studying up on Sophos it is now downloading in the background. Had to make sure it could handle routing as well, the website was short on specifics. Thanks again; something more to learn about.

 

[SunnyD]

Been running pfSense under Hyper-V for over a year. No issues, well except for integration service reporting it is not working but it is. Known bug with BSD under Hyper-V

While ESXi recognizes the guest extensions that is available in the pfSense packages, the problem lies in pfSense itself at the console level. The guest extensions aren't exactly up to date, and I have a feeling it causes some minor issues along the line. That said, I don't really have any uptime issues with pfSense. The only problem I've had recently was after installing squid and getting 502 errors on the main UI. Not being able to log into pfSense kind of sucks.

I'm now learning how virtual machines can be so much fun...

Welcome to the world of virtualization. It will also help you manage your costs somewhat. Reduction in overall hardware footprint and more importantly power consumption are major pluses.

 

[antmanbee]

This Board would work. $20 after rebate.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...ion-_-cables-_-na-_-na&Item=13-135-364&cm_sp=

with code AFMB160509A through 5/11

Just get the dual nic card and thunb drive and memory.

Cheap, stable and low power.

 

[MrBill10]

Time for an update... The hardest part on getting the Dell 2950 server up and running was updating the various firmwares. The BIOS was at 2.0 and needs to be at 2.7, but I'm stuck at 2.5 for the moment; I've walked away from the issues (CD-R reader only, no USB support, no 1.44 floppy drive), but will re-visit it with MS-DOS in a few days. Burned a Free-DOS ISO and added the 2.7 update to the disk but the machine just laughed; dug out my old 6.22 DOS 1.44 disks and will have to fire up one of the antique Pentiums to burn another ISO. Windows 98 here I come... If anyone has a DOS ISO with the 2.7 BIOS update attached that is known to work, I'd like to be your friend...

All I can say about ESXi is wow... Freaking unbelievable; pfSense in one VM, Win7 in another, network support everywhere, VSphere is a dream to work with... and I've just scratched the surface. The pfSense documentation is superb in how it walks you through the VM setup and installation; from there building additional VM's & getting them up and connected is super easy.

I'm hooked; already looking at newer servers with lots of memory and hard drive, but will wait until the 2950 starts pushing back. 8 processors and 32GB of memory should do me for a couple months anyway.

Maybe.

 

[sdifox]

Time for an update... The hardest part on getting the Dell 2950 server up and running was updating the various firmwares. The BIOS was at 2.0 and needs to be at 2.7, but I'm stuck at 2.5 for the moment; I've walked away from the issues (CD-R reader only, no USB support, no 1.44 floppy drive), but will re-visit it with MS-DOS in a few days. Burned a Free-DOS ISO and added the 2.7 update to the disk but the machine just laughed; dug out my old 6.22 DOS 1.44 disks and will have to fire up one of the antique Pentiums to burn another ISO. Windows 98 here I come... If anyone has a DOS ISO with the 2.7 BIOS update attached that is known to work, I'd like to be your friend...

All I can say about ESXi is wow... Freaking unbelievable; pfSense in one VM, Win7 in another, network support everywhere, VSphere is a dream to work with... and I've just scratched the surface. The pfSense documentation is superb in how it walks you through the VM setup and installation; from there building additional VM's & getting them up and connected is super easy.

I'm hooked; already looking at newer servers with lots of memory and hard drive, but will wait until the 2950 starts pushing back. 8 processors and 32GB of memory should do me for a couple months anyway.

Maybe.

Did you install esxi on a usb stick and dedicate all actual drive space to datastore?

 

[MrBill10]

USB is part of the problem, or at least my inability to make it work. The 2950 doesn't support USB in BIOS v2.5; can't boot from it and the icon is greyed out in VSphere. I'm hoping when I get v2.7 installed support will appear...

CentOS was pre-installed when I brought the box home; no problem mounting USB but I'm basically lost in Linux. I want to get a VM running Ubuntu and start learning my way around.

I don't want to spend a lot of time or money upgrading the 2950, but do plan on adding a pair of SATA SSD drives once I figure out how to do it.