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. 

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. 

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 .

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

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