Quad Gb NIC or Managed Switch
- Thread starter Kim_73
- Start date
Solution
Sam Poland
Honorable
- Dec 5, 2013
- 200
- 0
- 10,760
Hi USAFret
Thanks for looking at this and your answer. DHCP and firewall are 2 of my aims with this, obviously once I'm confident enough to connect it without leaving an open door of doom... If you have the time would you have a look at my Home Server Component post as this has my aims with this learning experience.
Cheers
Sam Poland
Honorable
- Dec 5, 2013
- 200
- 0
- 10,760
failboat
Splendid
- Feb 19, 2010
- 1,905
- 51
- 21,390
There are several advantages to using your PC for everything. The main disadvantage is adding NICs, but if you don't need many it's great.
The Pros are you can run services on both LAN and WAN like Snort, each NIC gets it's own throughput opposed to using another switch and having the throughput of one NIC, and no extra hardware needed.
My home setup is like this. I use Proxmox and setup two bridges, LAN and WAN. WAN needs one NIC, all others go to LAN.
I run a pfsense VM and setup the interfaces to use my bridges.
I installed proxmox on ZFS raidz with ssd cache.
Run a container for turnkey file server using most of my storage.
Ubuntu VM with chrome remote desktop for remote access.
I bought a used Ivy Bridge low power Xeon E3 and a super micro mobo off ebay very cheap. DDR3 ECC unbuffed ram isn't cheap, do not buy DDR3 ECC reg ram, it's very cheap but only works with E5 or E7 Xeons.
The Pros are you can run services on both LAN and WAN like Snort, each NIC gets it's own throughput opposed to using another switch and having the throughput of one NIC, and no extra hardware needed.
My home setup is like this. I use Proxmox and setup two bridges, LAN and WAN. WAN needs one NIC, all others go to LAN.
I run a pfsense VM and setup the interfaces to use my bridges.
I installed proxmox on ZFS raidz with ssd cache.
Run a container for turnkey file server using most of my storage.
Ubuntu VM with chrome remote desktop for remote access.
I bought a used Ivy Bridge low power Xeon E3 and a super micro mobo off ebay very cheap. DDR3 ECC unbuffed ram isn't cheap, do not buy DDR3 ECC reg ram, it's very cheap but only works with E5 or E7 Xeons.
Hi, thanks for your answer it's really appreciated. I've just finished the build today from mostly spare hardware (i7 3770, asrock b75m r1, 16gb non ecc ddr3, 80+ gold corsair psu, 3x 2tb hdd, 2x 500gb hdd, 240gb ssd, dual gbit nic) and this will be a headless box. I was originally intending to use this as firewall, switch, plex server, vm's for game servers with low ccu's, dchp and some other things I forgot in my initial rush of enthusiasm
Would you separate the firewall and bridging from this system and have it in a separate box or is that unnecessary?I'm basically learning from the ground up because I had the spare hardware to do it and I'm all for learning new things, im going to have a good read about pfsense next. Your advice and pointers in the right direction are much appreciated, thanks.
failboat
Splendid
- Feb 19, 2010
- 1,905
- 51
- 21,390
Kim_73 :
Hi, thanks for your answer it's really appreciated. I've just finished the build today from mostly spare hardware (i7 3770, asrock b75m r1, 16gb non ecc ddr3, 80+ gold corsair psu, 3x 2tb hdd, 2x 500gb hdd, 240gb ssd, dual gbit nic) and this will be a headless box. I was originally intending to use this as firewall, switch, plex server, vm's for game servers with low ccu's, dchp and some other things I forgot in my initial rush of enthusiasm
Would you separate the firewall and bridging from this system and have it in a separate box or is that unnecessary?I'm basically learning from the ground up because I had the spare hardware to do it and I'm all for learning new things, im going to have a good read about pfsense next. Your advice and pointers in the right direction are much appreciated, thanks.
That's plenty of power for all that. Some game servers can suck ram. If you start with free software you can do a lot of testing. I'd highly recommend trying proxmox. You don't want to install it headless though. It's very nice to be able to use the console with spice. Headless = command line only remote access. You won't ever need to plug a monitor in it but it still uses the gpu.
pfsense only needs 1 cpu, 5G storage, and 500MB ram. the power of a high end x86 cpu compared to the ones in cheap networking equipment is day and night. separate box is more for reliability if you were running a business on it or something.
hypervisors are great for learning because you can take snapshots of the VMs you are working on then when stuff breaks you just revert back in like 5 seconds and move on.
TRENDING THREADS
-
-
-
Question Help in troubleshooting possible graphics card issue?
- Started by nort99
- Replies: 5
-
Question RX 6600 visual glitches right after upgrading to it- Started by Wamek
- Replies: 4
-
News US sanctions transform China into legacy chip production juggernaut — production jumped 40% in Q1 2024- Started by Admin
- Replies: 35
-
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram