Messages

31

Hardware and Performance / Re: Good ITX board with limited availability

« on: March 07, 2019, 08:18:39 am »

Check this ASUS P11C-I as well, I like the Supermicros better, but if you don’t need integrated IPMI or DC power supply, this might be nice as well: https://www.asus.com/us/Commercial-Servers-Workstations/P11C-I/

Nice. Yes, looks equivalent to https://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/X11/X11SCL-IF.cfm but without IPMI as you say. It probably varies but where I am they are basically the same price, so for an i3 or Xeon D-2100 build I would probably still go SuperMicro.

32

Hardware and Performance / Re: Good ITX board with limited availability

« on: March 05, 2019, 11:55:42 pm »

why just not buy something like this for performance: https://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/Xeon/D/X10SDV-4C-TLN2F.cfm this should be about 6900 PassMark points, but much more efficient and and you could use this to power it https://www.logicsupply.com/cbl-pwrpd73/

That looks sweet! In this local market that m/board is priced approx €45 over the combination X11SCL-IF + i3 8th gen but as you say would run more efficient and maybe more quiet too.

By the way I see SuperMicro recommends this case for it:
https://www.supermicro.com/products/chassis/1u/504/SC504-203B

That actually comes with a 200W Gold level PSU and doesn't seem stupidly expensive so that would probably be the best option..?

That motherboard + abovementioned case + 8GB RAM + SSD would be something like €850 here, with 8GB RAM instead of 16GB. Only 2 LAN ports though. At least in my config I would also need to add a PCI card with additional 2 NICs.

33

Hardware and Performance / Re: Good ITX board with limited availability

« on: March 05, 2019, 11:37:39 pm »

I feel like the barebones are overpriced...
In general I like the i3 idea for high performance firewall builds.
What about using just 8GB ram, 16GB seems to be just too much for most cases. I have 16 GB by my self and I use only 4GB and out of it about 2,5 GB for Ram disk only.
450W PSU and 67W TDP CPU makes no sense it will be so ineffective, tha what you save on HW, you’ll pay for electricity.

Yes completely agree, I did it pretty quickly and just picked the smallest SeaSonic on the list, wasn't even that cheap.. a smaller one and ideally more efficient too would be better of course. Agreed on the RAM also, probably too much overkill. I have 8GB in my current install, tbh 4GB would probably have been fine too.

Having said all that. In the comparison I used the same single 16GB RAM stick for all 3 options, so taking it down to 8GB would shave the same €90 or so off all of 3 alternatives.

why just not buy something like this for performance: https://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/Xeon/D/X10SDV-4C-TLN2F.cfm this should be about 6900 PassMark points, but much more efficient and and you could use this to power it https://www.logicsupply.com/cbl-pwrpd73/

That looks sweet! In this local market that m/board is priced approx €45 over the combination X11SCL-IF + i3 8th gen but as you say would run more efficient and maybe more quiet too.

34

Hardware and Performance / Re: Good ITX board with limited availability

« on: March 05, 2019, 08:22:22 pm »

I specced up 3 Mini-ITX builds for kicks.

Motherboard: SuperMicro X11SCL-IF (inc 2x Gb LAN ports)
Case: Fractal Design Node 304
CPU: Intel Core i3 8300 with stock cooler
PSU: Seasonic 450W PSU
RAM: 1x Samsung DDR4 2400MHz ECC 16GB
SSD: Intel 600p Series M.2 2280 SSD 128GB
LAN: HP Intel Ethernet I350-T2 2-Port 1Gb NIC
Parts available in Sweden for the sum total equiv of €883

Or

Barebone: SuperMicro E300-9A-4C 5500 (Intel Atom C3558)
(https://www.supermicro.com/products/system/Mini-ITX/SYS-E300-9A-4C.cfm)
RAM: 1x Samsung DDR4 2400MHz ECC 16GB
SSD: Intel 600p Series M.2 2280 SSD 128GB
Available in Sweden for €760


Or

Barebone: SuperMicro E300-9A-8C 7400 (Intel Atom C3758)
(https://www.supermicro.com/products/system/Mini-ITX/SYS-E300-9A-8C.cfm)
RAM: 1x Samsung DDR4 2400MHz ECC 16GB
SSD: Intel 600p Series M.2 2280 SSD 128GB
Available in Sweden for €940

So how do the CPUs compare?

According to https://www.cpubenchmark.net:
Intel Atom C3558 (4 cores): 2538, single thread 876
Intel Atom C3758 (8 cores): ??
Intel Core i3-8300 (4 cores): 8661, single thread 2167

So the custom build seems to deliver more bang for the buck and also flexibility (can stick a Xeon CPU in there in the future if needed/desired) but obviously not as neat a solution as the SuperMicro barebones. Also the SuperMicro boxes probably run very quiet if not completely silent.

35

Hardware and Performance / Re: Good ITX board with limited availability

« on: March 04, 2019, 01:56:31 pm »

Agreed those are nice machines, not cheap though. At least for what they retail for here (Sweden), you can get a SuperMicro board + much more powerful CPU in a non-SuperMicro case for less than this Atom-based barebone.

36

Hardware and Performance / Re: Good ITX board with limited availability

« on: March 01, 2019, 09:19:52 pm »

What about these for that matter, has anyone tested them? I think this is better than Asus as it has IPMI inbuilt without having to buy an extra module and with celeron G4900T it would be cheap and it would perform fairly well, while still having ECC memory:
X11SCL-iF https://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/X11/X11SCL-iF.cfm

That SuperMicro board looks awesome.

37

Hardware and Performance / Re: Good ITX board with limited availability

« on: February 26, 2019, 10:25:31 pm »

Or Asus P10S-I. A bit more money but you get more onboard LAN ports and more CPU power (and choice). Not quite so niche so not so difficult to purchase either.

38

Hardware and Performance / Re: Considering a OPNsense setup

« on: February 26, 2019, 02:35:03 pm »

Well I guess it’s hard to know what’s what in the whole chain of ISP, router and network including WiFi.. so maybe I’m reading too much into it. But with the combination of an ISP well-known for reliability and speed, gigabit fiber, opnsense on i5 and then WiFi on Ubiquiti access points it’s more the *absense* of any sort of discernible lag or uneven performance, ever, unless it is evidently at the other end (e.g. Apple iCloud...). And that includes most of the family computers that accesses the web through Squid on opnsense so that I can filter content (using one of those public lists) to block some of the really bad stuff. Opnsense also running its own caching nameserver, dhcp and ntp.

I frequently find on other networks that performance is much more uneven or even categorically slower even if on paper it should be the same of faster.

But as mentioned, never easy to know what is what... but I like headroom. ;-)

39

Hardware and Performance / Re: Considering a OPNsense setup

« on: February 24, 2019, 10:47:41 pm »

I like the idea of it (Suricata), although must confess I don’t think I’ve ever caught anything with it ;-) (lots of false positives though)

Just another point worth considering too.. to whatever extent you plan to run services on the box beyond vanilla routing and firewall, like caching & filtering web proxy (squid), dns, vpn (site-to-site, outbound or road warrior) etc - it’s nice to have them sharp & snappy. I’m kind of used to it from back home and don’t think about it but can often tell the difference when I’m on other networks.

40

Hardware and Performance / Re: Considering a OPNsense setup

« on: February 24, 2019, 01:06:14 pm »

For what it's worth, I'm running on an i5-5250U and Intel NICs and get about 600-700MBit with Suricata and some rules enabled. Easily saturate gigabit without Suricata.

I wouldn't have gone below i5 with gigabit wan. Next machine is going to be beefier to ensure some headroom, likely Xeon. Probably still possible to keep it quiet, with careful selection of chassis and coolers.

41

Hardware and Performance / Re: Considering a OPNsense setup

« on: February 24, 2019, 09:08:12 am »

(sorry, regarding gigabit and ids, I must have mixed up the threads. ;-) anyway, take the advise for what it is - if you want more performance, look at those other options, and Qotom is likely to give you the best bang for the buck depending on where you live and whether you can order them direct from AliExpress or not... I’m using an i5 mode with great success for my gigabit wan.)

42

Hardware and Performance / Re: Considering a OPNsense setup

« on: February 24, 2019, 08:54:16 am »

In that series, and with the performance requirements for gigabit and ids I would probably have looked at this model instead: https://www.thomas-krenn.com/en/products/application/opnsense-firewalls/les-network-plus-opnsense.html

Or alternatively a Qotom Q355G4, can be found cheaper

Or alternatively a custom build around for example a Asus P10S-I mini itx board. You’d have to add a dual or quad Ethernet card (PCI).
https://www.asus.com/Commercial-Servers-Workstations/P10S-I/

43

Hardware and Performance / Re: Qotom hardware

« on: September 03, 2018, 02:57:51 pm »

Yes. Qotom 355G4 with i5, opnsense and symmetric gigabit WAN. Without IDS/IPS I easily saturate full gigabit, with Suricata and my current rule set I get approx 800Mbit down and 700 up.

44

Hardware and Performance / Re: Qotom hardware

« on: August 28, 2018, 05:34:19 pm »

Although I have bridge set up as a unmanaged switch now, I am interested if there is a more efficient way to set this up.  Not sure if the unmanage switches are smart enough i  that they only route traffic onto the port where the device is connected...or it 'broadcasts' it on all ports hoping one has the device with that IP is connected.   May i  the future need to make work smarter to reduce network loading (especially if I add a few more IP cameras).

Small (5 port) gigabit hardware switches are very cheap these days and (at least Netgear and D-Link) very reliable too. Those definitely function as you mention ie keep tables of MAC addresses reachable at each port and route traffic accordingly. Old ‘hubs’ from the days of 10 Mbit Ethernet used to broadcast indiscriminately but that was quite a while ago.

Not sure if there are many strong cases for software bridging these days given how cheap the hardware is? At least if you’re trying to minimise complexity and chances of things going wrong in connection with software updates etc...

45

18.7 Legacy Series / Re: Thunderbolt or USB-C Ethernet Performance and/or interface recommendations

« on: August 17, 2018, 07:53:00 am »

I’ve got that Qotom model too (i5), bought from Ali Express. Similarly, gets a bit hot once the ambient approaches 30 C. However it was quite cheap and irrespective, I found fanless design with 4 Intel NICs pretty hard to come by other than as an exotic (expensive) custom build. From that persp I think the Qotoms are pretty unique.

Because of where the fiber connects to my home, and wiring constraints, I keep the router in the bedroom so the noise level is pretty important for me. If that was less of a consideration I would have used a cheap second hand business desktop instead with a bunch of NICs on PCI cards.

Or as a VM... I’ve got an ESXi server in the cellar and that is *not* quiet ;-)
That would need more cabling though, or exotic VLAN configuration