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

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

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

Everything AES related is 4 to 6 times faster with AES-NI instructions set.

An enormous difference for anything encrypted AES.

A comparaison:  http://www.cpu-world.com/Compare/111/Intel_Atom_E3845_vs_Intel_Celeron_J1900.html

Paul Jr

Hello Paul,

Oh yes, absolutely, but I don't do much AES related stuff on my XG firewall so I focused on compute/speed over that.

Ian, I'll likely get an e3-1225v3 based system but I am very interested in finding out more about those X10SDV boards as those D-1518 processors look tasty.

Emile

Hi Emile,

Yes, but a little bit on the slow side otherwise for a configure and set arrangement they would be excellent.

Ian

Hello Emile,

I can recommend the X10SDV board. I've been using it for over a year and a half. I have installed the X10SDV-6C-TLN4F model with the ESXi v6.7 hypervisor. If you would like to use RAID drives in conjunction with the ESXi hypervisor on this board, you need to use the hardware RAID controller, because the ESXi hypervisor does not support integrated Intel SW RAID controller. I use the Adaptec RAID 6405E RAID controller, but I recommend using an additional RAID chip cooler for this controller because it gets hot enough.

Regards

alda

Hello Emile,

I can recommend the X10SDV board. I've been using it for over a year and a half. I have installed the X10SDV-6C-TLN4F model with the ESXi v6.7 hypervisor. If you would like to use RAID drives in conjunction with the ESXi hypervisor on this board, you need to use the hardware RAID controller, because the ESXi hypervisor does not support integrated Intel SW RAID controller. I use the Adaptec RAID 6405E RAID controller, but I recommend using an additional RAID chip cooler for this controller because it gets hot enough.

Regards

alda

Hi Alda,

Yeah, looking at the reviews and discussions on the board is that it is a very toasty piece of kit and active cooling is a must.

If you can get the board with enough interfaces, the RAID is definitely a good option. I'm looking at the dual 10GbE 4C boards and then i'll just slap in an Intel i210 quad port NIC for good measure.

Really curious as to what kind of speeds i could push through it but at around £400 it's not a test and measure, it's a "you've decided" issue!

Emile

Hello Emile,

as I wrote, I'm happy with the motherboard, it works perfectly. Maybe I would recommend another 1 Gb card, namely intel i350T2V2 bulk ( or i350T4V2 bulk ). It should have better throughput than the i210.

Regards

alda

Not knowing how large of a storage you need, assuming it is below 2 terabyte, put your money on a large NVMe SSD storage.  No raid will beat that.

I have prepared a filter on Intel: https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/search/featurefilter.html?productType=873&2_StatusCodeText=4&0_StatusCodeText1=3,4&3_CoreCount-Min=4&3_CoreCount-Max=4&0_AESTech=True&3_MaxTDP-Min=5&3_MaxTDP-Max=20&3_ClockSpeed-Min=1200&1_Filter-ProcessorGraphics=19001

Paul Jr

Hello Big_Buck,

your filter points to intel processors. but, it is not important.

I used the HW RAID controller because the ESXi hypervisors do not support SW RAID controllers, which of course is integrated on the X10SDV-6C-TLN4F motherboard. It does not matter which hard disk with which storage technology you use with this HW RAID controller, it is important that you can create RAID 1,5,6 etc. However, if you use a SW RAID controller and create a RAID array in it, the vmware ESXi hypervisor "sees" this RAID array only as separate disks without redundant protection of stored data. This will never give you greater protection for the data stored on any technology disc. This is a limitation of the ESXi hypervisor storage subsystem implementation. It is of course possible to use your proposed NVMe SSD technology, but if you do not use the HW RAID controller in the ESXi vmware hypervisor, then the data stored on one disk will be irretrievably lost when the disk crashes.

Regards

alda