The Holy Grail of Home Lab and Office Hardware

[Docholliday]

As I move into a new home and set up my modest home lab and office, I am moving from the PFSense train.

My PFsense box was built from scrounging parts and was in a tower. It worked great, but was noisy, big and consumed more power than necessary.

So I'd like to be a bit more refined this go round. Maybe this is a bit of a holy grail. My ideal is:

- inexpensive, I don't mind scrounging parts again and building my next box on a budget.

- reasonably future proof, handling up to 1 Gbps. Currently on 100 Mbps fiber for five users with laptops, devices, lots, etc.

- run a moderate number of services, IPS, DPS, Adguard, an occasional VPN

- quiet, ideally fanless, but may need to scrounge some quiet fans

- as energy efficient as possible

- ideally rack mountable, so to avoid another small piece of kit kicking around. (I have spare rack space)

Any ideas on a good used foundation to build this on, or with new parts, etc?

TIA

[phoenix]

Welcome to the club.  :D

There are plenty of threads in these forums on fanless but powerful hardware for OPNsense in these forums. If you're looking for new hardware why don't you do a search for "qotom" and that should give you a starting point for a suitable replacement for your current setup. Unfortunately I can't help too much with hardware as my setup is a VM in a vSphere environment.

[Greelan]

I very much like my ThinkCentre m720 Tiny. Has a CPU fan but is pretty quiet overall. I've got the Intel 4 port NIC installed

Deciso themselves have some nice looking appliances although they are on the expensive side

[Docholliday]

Sorry for the double post. My iPad isn't playing nicely.

[Docholliday]

Ugh. I will back away slowly now

[Docholliday]

Welcome to the club.  :D

There are plenty of threads in these forums on fanless but powerful hardware for OPNsense in these forums. If you're looking for new hardware why don't you do a search for "qotom" and that should give you a starting point for a suitable replacement for your current setup. Unfortunately I can't help too much with hardware as my setup is a VM in a vSphere environment.

Thanks for the welcome! I have looked at qotom, but was open to a home brew build particularly if I can wrap it in a rack mount. I enjoy putting it together, particularly if I can get it done for very little through scrounging and scavenging for parts.  It may not be possible in this case because I did it last time, but it was big, noisy and took more power than necessary. Hence, the 'Holy Grail' to achieve my ideal list for not much money.

[phoenix]

I'd suggest you take a look through the https://forum.opnsense.org/index.php?board=21.0 to see what others have done and there's also the Deciso site to see what they sell:

https://www.deciso.com/resources-opnsense-a10/

https://www.deciso.com/downloads/Brochure-Deciso-appliances_ordered-rev201808.pdf

[tusc]

If you're looking for something that's relatively cheap ( ~ $150 on ebay), upgradable, can handle 1Gb link (it has a 3.1GHz CPU) and low power (idles at 10 watts), then check out the HP 290. There's a big thread below on the many use cases. Unfortunately it's not rack mountable but it is a small form factor. It has one 80mm fan but very quiet.

https://forums.serverbuilds.net/t/official-hp-290-p0043w-owners-thread/2829

[Docholliday]

If you're looking for something that's relatively cheap ( ~ $150 on ebay), upgradable, can handle 1GbE (it has a 3.1GHz CPU) and low power (idles at 10 watts), then check out the HP 290. There's a big thread below on the many use cases. Unfortunately it's not rack mountable but it is a small form factor. It has one 80mm fan but very quiet.

https://forums.serverbuilds.net/t/official-hp-290-p0043w-owners-thread/2829

This is outstanding.  Thanks for this.  It is not rack mountable, but it is starting to tick a lot of the 'Holy Grail' boxes!

[chemlud]

...comparable hardware from Dell:

Dell Optiplex Small Form Factor (SFF = 2x PCI slot for NIC cards)

[EricE]

Ordered the E3950 version of the Fitlet2 from here this morning: http://fitpc.com/shop/configure?c=10

Pre configured with RAM, SSD and the VSA plate. Will be interesting to see what the shipping time and out of box experience is like.

[DrTacoMD]

I picked up two Dell VFP1445 for $125/ea as new open box on eBay this week. This is my holy grail. I didn't even know it existed until last week. Just keep your eyes posted and you can find some amazing gems.

Specs here: https://i.dell.com/sites/csdocuments/Product_Docs/en/vep-1405-spec-sheet.pdf

VEP1445
C3758 Processor (8 core w/ QAT)
M.2 240 SSD with 16G eMMC Flash for recovery OS
16G DDR4 ECC
(6 x 1G) + (2x 10G SFP+)
2 Fans
8"x 8"x 2"

It has WiFi, but I won't be using it.
802.11ac, 2x2 MIMO, max. phy rate: 866.7 Mbps w/ Bluetooth

Management is via serial port only, there is no video out.

[Inxsible]

I very much like my ThinkCentre m720 Tiny. Has a CPU fan but is pretty quiet overall. I've got the Intel 4 port NIC installed

You are probably on the East of the Atlantic, because back here I have searched high and low but not found a Lenovo tiny which could accomodate a NIC card. (ebay and new)

I just purchased 2 HP T730 thin clients for basic usage -- I plan to set them up at my parent's place and sister's place. I don't need those boxes to do any IPS/IDS so they are plenty powerful for basic usage + VPNs. I bought them for $85 + i340-T4 NIC + 32GB m.2 SSD = $126 each.

I have my Opnsense on a J3355 board with 4GB RAM in a 1U rack mount which started life as a pfSense box. Works great + Doesn't use too much power.

[sorano]

I picked up two Dell VFP1445 for $125/ea as new open box on eBay this week. This is my holy grail. I didn't even know it existed until last week. Just keep your eyes posted and you can find some amazing gems.

Specs here: https://i.dell.com/sites/csdocuments/Product_Docs/en/vep-1405-spec-sheet.pdf

VEP1445
C3758 Processor (8 core w/ QAT)
M.2 240 SSD with 16G eMMC Flash for recovery OS
16G DDR4 ECC
(6 x 1G) + (2x 10G SFP+)
2 Fans
8"x 8"x 2"

It has WiFi, but I won't be using it.
802.11ac, 2x2 MIMO, max. phy rate: 866.7 Mbps w/ Bluetooth

Management is via serial port only, there is no video out.

Damn. That is an amazing find at that price :o .

Never seen that hardware before. I'll be on the lookout for sure. Let me know if you find any more :)

[Greelan]

I very much like my ThinkCentre m720 Tiny. Has a CPU fan but is pretty quiet overall. I've got the Intel 4 port NIC installed

You are probably on the East of the Atlantic, because back here I have searched high and low but not found a Lenovo tiny which could accomodate a NIC card. (ebay and new)

I guess if you keep going east you do eventually reach the Pacific Rim [emoji13]

But yeah, it seems the 4 port NIC is a standard configuration option offered by Lenovo in only certain countries. But you can still roll your own: https://smallformfactor.net/forum/threads/lenovo-m720q-tiny-router-firewall-build-with-aftermarket-4-port-nic.14793/#post-218704