[olug] Tiny rack-mount chassis

Obi-Wan obiwan at jedi.com
Tue Jan 14 18:07:45 UTC 2014


On 01/14/2014 11:43 AM, Matthew Goeres wrote:
> Have you considered a small Intel Atom based bare bone kit?
>
> I personally run my firewall within a VM on one of my servers but if I was going to move my PfSense instance over to hardware this is what I would go with.
>
> http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16859324010
> http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816101364

Those look like pretty slick options, too.  I wonder what sort of issues 
that cheaper one has with SSD's, since that's what I'd probably go 
with.  It's still looking like $450 total once you add some RAM and a 
couple tiny SSD's.

>>>>>> -----Original Message-----
>>>>>> From: olug-bounces at olug.org [mailto:olug-bounces at olug.org] On Behalf
>>>>>> Of Obi-Wan
>>>>>> Sent: Friday, January 10, 2014 3:32 PM
>>>>>> To: Omaha Linux Users Group
>>>>>> Subject: [olug] Tiny rack-mount chassis
>>>>>>
>>>>>> My 1st-gen HP DL360 server (Sam knows about this) that I'm using for
>>>>>> my home firewall is starting to get a little long in the tooth.  It
>>>>>> still runs perfectly, but it lost one of the mirrored drives this
>>>>>> morning, and I plugged in my last spare.  The build date on that
>>>>>> drive was 2001.
>>>>>> Replacement drives are cost prohibitive, so I'll be replacing the
>>>>>> entire chassis before I lose my last drives.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> This server runs PPPoE to terminate my DSL connection, iptables
>>>>>> firewall, mail server, incoming web/SSL proxy, DNS, and DHCP
>>>>>> servers.
>>>>>> It's a pretty light load, and even for that ancient box. I certainly
>>>>>> don't need much horsepower for this box.  I do want extreme
>>>>>> reliability.
>>>>>>   Mirrored drives are a must, and dual power supplies might be nice.
>>>>>> Dual
>>>>>> cooling fans are probably wise.  None of that needs to be hot-swap,
>>>>>> though.
>>>>>>   I need two ethernet ports (preferably GigE, and 3 would be nice
>>>>>> just in case).  I'd also like the chassis to be quite small so that
>>>>>> it can hang in a telco rack when I move next year.  I'd like it to
>>>>>> be really low power so that it'll run forever off my UPS when
>>>>>> necessary.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Any suggestions on the hardware and/or case I should use for this?
>>>>>> I'm usually shopping at the other end of the horsepower spectrum.
>>>>>> There's got to be chassis out there that are way smaller than the
>>>>>> standard rack-mount server, but can still run a standard linux
>>>>>> distro with some redundancy.


-- 
*Ben "Obi-Wan" Hollingsworth* obiwan at jedi.com <mailto:obiwan at jedi.com> 
www.Jedi.com <http://www.jedi.com>
The stuff of earth competes for the allegiance I owe only to the
Giver of all good things, so if I stand, let me stand on the
promise that You will pull me through. /-- Rich Mullins/



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