Using EAP Refresh 1 ISO to build a test XG

Hi Ian,

My J1900 box has really been struggling with management since v17, at first I thought it was the PCIe SATA SSD I was using but when I switched types of SSD it made no changes.

I'm getting ready to relegate the J1900 to "basic features" only for later versions of the XG, sadly.

I'm also looking at an e3-12xx series processor for my next home XG box.

Emile

I haven't installed XG since v17 so the process seemed fairly straight forward to me atleast in a vm. My load average was a little higher in the beginning but calmed down nicely after the first few minutes and have been fairly stable since. The firewall is snappy compared to my memory of it with v17. Only thing that has gone up is the memory footprint. Of course I am not running a 100 DPI rules and relying mostly on web proxy without ssl decryption so essentially it is v17 and that could be the main difference.

I did notice the allow all smtp firewall rule but as everything else XG, allow all doesn't mean it will pass any traffic unless configured so nothing to worry about other than people trying and trying to use it as a relay. But I do agree with your sentiment and deleted that rule immediately upon installation.

Regards.

Edit: My firewall did reboot on its own under heavy load with 4GB allocated in a vm and that was strange as I haven't had a spontaneous reboot of any OS in years without hardware problems.

Hi Emile,

The E3-1240 is an overkill, but that was all I had installed in a case.

I looked at upgrading to the e3-1225 v6 and found the cost wan't worth it, no performance improvement and no power saving. If you need a new box, the e3-1225v6 will do the job very well,

Mine sits around 20w except at restart time.

The J1900 did work very well with the UTM 9.6, the interface was quite snappy before I migrated it to the XG.

Ian

Hi Ian,

I'm not sure what route i'm going down, it has to be small and can be tucked out the way because the FW will be in the living room not my home office. Been looking at some HP Z230 Xeon workstations but i'd rather look into something a little less power hungry.

The J1900 was a great processor and I have run XG on it since v15 GA but around v16.5/v17 I noticed the GUI be less responsive. Methinks it's time to move on!

Well worth the 160 British Shmekels I paid for it though!

I've been eyeing up the e3-1225v3 as that's the processor in the XG430 IIRC.

Emile

Hello Emile,

if I can recommend suitable hardware for home use, I have a very good experience with Pondesk hardware appliances. Especially with Intel Atom® E3845 4 LAN AES-NI 3G/4G Fanless Firewall Router ( https://www.pondesk.com/product/Intel-Atom-E3845-4-LAN-AESNI-3G4G-Fanless-Firewall-Router_MNHO-048 ).

Regards

alda

Hi Alda,

Thank you for your suggestion but apart from the AES-NI, the E3845 and J1900 are exactly the same processor albeit the J1900 has burst frequency and a higher base clock.

For my needs and my upcoming WAN speeds, i'll need the high frequency Xeon territory, moar powah!

Emile

Hi Emile,

I have try to build by UTMs and XGs using miniTIX server motherboards with a lower power E3.

I have number of miniITX server motherboards about to be recycled because I can't get CPUs for them. I tried the I3 and I5 and they were just too power hungry.

The e3-1240 I am using is also power hungry because it has to have an extra video card and I can't get V3 processors so it has to be a new board that will take V5 or V6 CPUs.

At this stage I have an e3-1225v5 running with 4 ports, 6gb (8 installed).

The issue I have with the current batch of server motherboards is they have one supported NIC and one unsupported so I need to add an additional card.

I have intel mini ITX server boards sitting around.

Ian

Hi Ian,

Yeah, I'm musing about an LGA1150 Supermicro micro-atx board, I really haven't decided whether I want a low power mini PC or go mid power ITX/uATX, they cost about the same. Where I am electricity is quite cheap so I'm relatively nonplussed for an up to 150w regular consumption.

I have Quad port Intel Gigabit cards and a few other networking bits lying around so I could do a build my own, might price it up and see what I can get.

Emile

I've been eyeing up this board: SuperMicro X10SLM-F

2 ports I210 Intel Gigabit and a IPMI port and I can find the board for around 75-125 depending on who I nab it from. It also has an aspeed BMC so theoretically no dGPU required plus several PCIe slots. Even just consuming one PCIe slot you can have a 6 port firewall.

But i'm really eyeing up an X10SDV board, dual 10GbE and dual 1GbE ports as standard in a mini-itx format...

Emile

Hi Emile,

that is the one I am using (X10SLM-F) the e3-1240 v3 and it requires a display card. You need to purchase extra software to get the BMC going as far as I know. If you get the e3-1225 it will work well.

Ian