Topic: Hardware advice needed

[rswennen]

Hi,

I am looking at different types of hardware to build a rather large number of SME boxes with.

I will us them as gateway firewall on a cable modem or ADSL, so will need 2 ethernet interfaces (or 1 Eth and a built in ADSL if this works smooth), samba (file server) and file server for Intranet mostly and will log on remote via pptp.

I need a box that looks fancy and is capable of supporting +/- 15 internal users maily using intranet (internal web) and browsing huge files.

Has anyone experience with the Via EPIA PD and VIA EPIA CL motherboards ? they have 2 build in Ehernet interfaces.

How is the performance compared to a Via Epia 800 ?  Will the Via Epia 800 be powerfull enough ?

I also noticed Shuttle has a lot of barebones but there are so many it's hard to determine which would be the most suited one ?

Has anyone ever used a Changfun e-cube ?http://www.chyangfun.com/pt_barebone.asp Are they compatible with SME ? They look great ?

I'm not really an expert in hardware and since I'm looking for >100 boxes the price compared to performance has to be quite good.

If some-one knows a good supplier in Belgium or at least in Europe that would be nice.

Thanks in advance,

Rohnny

[matsk]

Contact me by email.


/Mats[/i]

[hanscees]

Hi,

I have just installed an via epia ve5000. Has an 500 mhz
processor without fans. I added an realtek cheapo pci nic.

E-smith 5.6 recognized the via stuff allright. I disabled all fancy stuff in the bios such as sound and usb and so on.

I installed it in a Via Sereniti 2000 Silver Case . Looks fancy and it cheap and fairly small.
However, if I would do this for an external firm or a customer I would take a bigger box to be able to cool the harddisk better. I have no idea if that is a real problem. I run a webserver on it so that is extra io (www.bomengids.nl have a look at some trees there.)

I would advise you to use mondo to make them a fancy recover cd. With the right cd-player (lite-on works fine) you can set up a new clone box in 30 minutes or less.

http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/smeserver/contribs/tha
ynes/E-Smith/mondoarchive/install.htm

The question you ask about megaherzes has a lot to do with the functionality you will be using.
If you use it as a mail server with user email postboxes on it with imap you can use the extra cpu power as well as  disk-power.

If you only use it as firewall/ squid box the 800 mh is even over the top. For squid you just stick in
1 gig of memory and the disk will hardly be used.

I think disk io is more of a problem than cpu power.
I think 500 mh cpu will do fine for 15 users.

cheers

Hans-Cees

[hanscees]

Hi,

sorry I missed the part that you will be using it as a file-server.

Security-wise that is a bad plan. You should not run a fileserver on a firewall (and since you install this right behind the adsl it is your firewall.). I would even advise to split up the email server with email boxes from the file-server. (I work at a security firm www.tunix.nl).

If you want a file-server and email server all in one I would make sure you have scsi harddisks and possibly raid 5. I would not use mini-itx then at all.

Hans-Cees