Seeking advice for purchase of embedded board (maybe net5501)

R

rusma

[SOLVED]

Hi!

I consider myself a newbie on buying things - could someone please help me with this purchase?

I'm wondering if I should buy the Soekris net5501 (http://soekris.com/net5501.htm) or not. In fact, I think it's a bit expensive. I'm considering using it for for home-use:
  • running OpenBSD/i386 or FreeBSD/i386 with PF, openvpn, and maybe mail/imaps.
    • I'll use vpn when I'm away from home (ie. at school)
  • maybe try to install some distros, like Slackware, Debian and Arch; just for the hell of it ;)
... Everything off a 8G CF-card, or a larger harddisk (SATA or IDE), but then I have to add another ~5$ for a bigger power supply (because then it becomes "fully-loaded") :( (1) What is more stable/reliable (last the longest, is fastest): harddisk or CF card? I've not set up a fileserver yet that can have the complete cvs source from the net5501, and 8G is somewhat small (I think) to have the complete source availabe and rebuild world and kernel from it (at least for FreeBSD, with OpenBSD it's fine, I think).

(2) How good is support in FreeBSD currently? Soekris says it's fully supported.

I'm not going to use the mini-PCI slot - so it's a complete waste to pay for it. Certanly, there may be a number of other things on the board that I do not need ... ie. maybe the usb port.

The net5501 uses ~20W, which i think is alot for the sake of a firewalling/mail appliance. I already have a Linksys NSLU2, which uses about 5-7W. I think it's bacause the NSLU2 is ARM based, and the net5501 is i386 based, and ARM processors have fewer pins demanding power. (3) Would any of you folks recommend some other appliance similar to what Soekris makes (routerlike, with NICs and serial interface), ie. some PC Engines board?

I've heard about blowfish encryption, but I'm not really in to it yet. (4) Is it a complete waste to buy the vpn1401 (http://soekris.com/vpn1401.htm) too? I'm not in to vpn stuff yet, either - do you think it is needed for encryption through vpn, or something?

I've thought to and fro over these things for the last 3-4 months, but haven't come any closer a conclusion.

I'm hoping to get good answers :)
 
I've been using a net5501 at home for about 3 months now.

rusma said:
In fact, I think it's a bit expensive.
Click to expand...
It is, but it is nice. PC Engines boards are the only alternative of similar quality who use the same architecture. I have no experience with their products though.

rusma said:
Everything off a 8G CF-card, or a larger harddisk (SATA or IDE), but then I have to add another ~5$ for a bigger power supply (because then it becomes "fully-loaded") :( (1) What is more stable/reliable (last the longest, is fastest): harddisk or CF card? I've not set up a fileserver yet that can have the complete cvs source from the net5501, and 8G is somewhat small (I think) to have the complete source availabe and rebuild world and kernel from it
Click to expand...
I really do not recommend using the net5501 like this. Although it can take a hard drive, it is limited to 100 mbps network interfaces, and it will probably be on the slow side for file serving. As for recompiling source on it, you'd have to be desperate. It works best as a router, firewall, dhcp server, vpn endpoint, dns server, etc. I build mine in binary form on my notebook using nanobsd. In fact mine has no compiler or toolchain on it. I'd hate to do source compiles on the net5501 itself...

CF should be much more robust than HDD.

rusma said:
(2) How good is support in FreeBSD currently?
Click to expand...
Mine's running FreeBSD 8 - works great.

rusma said:
I'm not going to use the mini-PCI slot - so it's a complete waste to pay for it. Certanly, there may be a number of other things on the board that I do not need ... ie. maybe the usb port.
Click to expand...
I find the USB port useful. Since it is my home router, if my ADSL line goes down I sometimes plug my cell phone into its USB port to get temporary internet access via 3G instead.

rusma said:
The net5501 uses ~20W, which i think is alot
Click to expand...
Actually I think 20W is its max power rating. Mine uses more like 10W and has an extra 4 ethernet interfaces in it.

rusma said:
(3) Would any of you folks recommend some other appliance similar to what Soekris makes (routerlike, with NICs and serial interface), ie. some PC Engines board?
Click to expand...
I don't have abundant experience, but I'd say give PC Engines Alix a try if the net5501 seems like overkill. They use pretty much identical architecture so FreeBSD support should be equal. These i386 based boards are actually nice in that everything works on i386... all ports, all of FreeBSD, everything. If you go with an ARM or MIPS based board you might run into compatibility issues.

rusma said:
I've heard about blowfish encryption, but I'm not really in to it yet. (4) Is it a complete waste to buy the vpn1401 (http://soekris.com/vpn1401.htm) too?
Click to expand...
Up to you. I can tell you that the net5501 has AES hardware acceleration onboard which FreeBSD can use. You'd probably have to be pushing many megabits/sec of encrypted data to benefit from hardware acceleration.
 
Just saying that it should be able to power a minipci and a pci device simultaneously, ie. mine with the lan1641 is not fully-loaded.
 
I mailed them, and I think if I will have heavy load on the board (torrents, I suppose), then I'll need the biggest ~5$ psu.

Why do they release two psu types then? Do you think the biggest also uses more power on it's own (ie. if you have measured different mobile phone-chargers plugged, but not charging the phone)?

Do you think the lan1641 and the onboard NIC is also much dependent on CPU-power (having a lower "inner CPU"/chip, or something, of their own)?

Do you think a 'Intel Pro 1000MT' would fit inside?
 
rusma said:
Why do they release two psu types then? Do you think the biggest also uses more power on it's own (ie. if you have measured different mobile phone-chargers plugged, but not charging the phone)?
Click to expand...
Not sure. Maybe to save cost for people who don't need a large supply?

rusma said:
Do you think the lan1641 and the onboard NIC is also much dependent on CPU-power (having a lower "inner CPU"/chip, or something, of their own)?
Click to expand...
The card itself doesn't use CPU, but sending more traffic through the router will. Soekris's card uses the sis(4) driver which does support polling(4) if you need to push lots of traffic.

rusma said:
Do you think a 'Intel Pro 1000MT' would fit inside?
Click to expand...
I've never seen that card, but pretty much any PCI card should fit in a net5501 provided it is half-length. You can see my net5501 with lan1641 installed here.
 
I've heard that it is not recommended to run both a web-/mail-server on the firewall. Would you reccommend some other type of low power box for using as a mailserver (ie. with mysql)?

I've never quite understood if this is a appropriate way of thinking, as this is gonna be in my home with no other load than me and some friends and family?

I really feel that openbsd makes me more paranoid than I already am (I hope not).
 
rusma said:
I've heard that it is not recommended to run both a web-/mail-server on the firewall. Would you reccommend some other type of low power box for using as a mailserver (ie. with mysql)?

I've never quite understood if this is a appropriate way of thinking, as this is gonna be in my home with no other load than me and some friends and family?
Click to expand...
It's not necessarily bad to run mail/web services on a firewall. For home use, it's fine.

Try run it all on the soekris and see how it handles it all. I wouldn't use mysql though - stick to hash tables or sqlite.

If you need more processing power, get an Atom based system such as this one.
 
Yes, however Atom supports max 2 GB RAM only, so suspect it's not worth running AMD64...

(mmm, atom+ion might support more than 2 GB)
 
All Atom CPU's are 64 bit.

I've heard reports of people using more than 2GB of memory (4GB in fact). I haven't tried it.

I own two of these boards:
http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/ATOM/945/X7SLA.cfm?typ=H

Both run FreeBSD, and both run well.
The board is slightly larger, and the overall system cost will be higher than a soekris. But you gain a lot from it IMO.

There's also a board with the Atom 230 -- It's shaves 4W off the power consumption and has only 1 NIC (Which might save another Watt orso).
http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/ATOM/945/X7SLA.cfm?typ=L

As for power usage, here's one of my setups (This is the 5015-H barebone with two 2.5" disks in RAID-1 and 2x1GB RAM):
http://mrtg.coloclue.net/power-watt/dcg-rpb-4a/dcg-rpb-4a_kwh_5.html

Average of ~30W with a peak of ~35W. This server is in a datacenter and I pay for power usage so that's pretty good ;)
 
Carpetsmoker said:
[...]I own two of these boards:
http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/ATOM/945/X7SLA.cfm?typ=H

Both run FreeBSD, and both run well.
The board is slightly larger, and the overall system cost will be higher than a soekris. But you gain a lot from it IMO.

There's also a board with the Atom 230 -- It's shaves 4W off the power consumption and has only 1 NIC (Which might save another Watt orso).
http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/ATOM/945/X7SLA.cfm?typ=L[...]
Click to expand...

Also pretty nice.

They did have fans though :( And only two NICs, but gigabits though :)

Where do I buy such Supermicro-boards? Ebay? Supermicro does seem well thought through pieces of hardware in general.

And those graphs included harddisks and all? Can I run from CF too?
 
They did have fans though
Click to expand...

Just one, for the chipset. I removed it and replaced it with a bigger zalman cooling block. I think you can probably also just remove the fan if your case has good airflow. Look at the case the 5015-H barebone comes in -- Almost no airflow at all in that case, and the board was designed for that case ...
Do note the fan is LOUD. Removing it is a must IMO.

Where do I buy such Supermicro-boards? Ebay?
Click to expand...

I bought them from supermicro directly since I work at a computer store ;) I guess $any_shop will do, they're the same boards no matter where you buy them ;)

And those graphs included harddisks and all? Can I run from CF too?
Click to expand...

Yes, this is the complete amount of power the system uses as measured by my colocating company.
You can use a SATA/ATA to CF converter. There's no direct CF connection like on some (all?) soekris machines. You can pick those up for a few euro.
 
Carpetsmoker said:
Look at the case the 5015-H barebone comes in -- Almost no airflow at all in that case, and the board was designed for that case ...
Click to expand...

I don't have a private rack, if that was what you initially meant (?).

How critical is airflow? I have a old (yr. ~2002) case with no cooling at all - does it work you do you think? I think it is still defined as a midi case.

Since you work at a shop: Will it be very expensive to buy goods from Supermicro as a private person? Soekris (I think) is defined as a OEM or something, selling goods to resellers. I think they knock off two thirds of the UPS shipping costs too, not considering if I was a private person or anything. It seems resellers of Soekris equipment are selling at skyhigh prices - is this the case for Supermicro boards (ex. @ your shop), so I'll get them really cheap if I order directly from Supermicro (long way from Osaka, Japan (or something) to Oslo, Norway)?

Note: The shipping costs is no different if ordering ie. a net5501-70 from the US, than form the EU (I called UPS).
 
I think I have to assemble a whole new computer (case, disks, cards, coolers, pins, screws, cables and power-supply) if I'm going to go with the Supermicro solution. Difficult, since I do not know anyone working in shops.
 
rusma, that's the nice thing about Tranquil. They sell pre-assembled, fanless atom systems ready for you to install an OS on it.

If you're going to build your own Atom board, I really like the Zotac ION board. (mini-itx.com is a great one-stop shop for piecing together these things, btw)
 
aragon said:
rusma, that's the nice thing about Tranquil. They sell pre-assembled, fanless atom systems ready for you to install an OS on it.

If you're going to build your own Atom board, I really like the Zotac ION board. (mini-itx.com is a great one-stop shop for piecing together these things, btw)
Click to expand...

I briefly read through the review. Wow! That's alot of outputs! Is not such boards aimed at people running home cinemas? I don't have overkill-house :) My television set have a HDMI output though, and maybe that wireless-n would be really nice to stream files from one floor to another - but I'm considering using the good ol' WRT54GL in front of the (possible) net5501, so would'nt know if the 'n' is really needed, unless data is transferred more effectively as it is if one use a 1000M NIC to the 100M NIC instead of 100M to 100M (I think I read that in a PF howto somewhere).

Is it a complete waste to buy the more powerful, and more expensive net5501-70 instead of the net5501-60? @aragon: which one do you use?
 
OK, folks!

I've placed my order on one net5501-70. I'll get back to you folks if I'm going to build a media server in the future ...
 
I have the net5501-70. I don't use all the RAM, but glad I have it. It's not that much more than the -60. :)

Cool, let us know how it goes. I'm sure you'll love it.
 
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