On Mon, 2009-05-25 at 16:22 +0200, Peter Hopfgartner wrote:
I had some of them, too, running for years. The only problem I incurred was with a Flash memory that degraded after a while, so I would really recommend some of thoses "industrial grade" flash memories. The hardware is superb.
Peter
nate wrote:
Bill Campbell wrote:
Any comments on CentOS 5 on Intel Atom CPUs?
I need to build a couple of inexpensive systems that will be used primarily as gateway/firewall systems with OpenVPN, and need recommendations in reliable hardware platforms. These will need two NICs.
Go with Soekris, they are built for that purpose. You can even get an SSL accelerator card for them. Mine has a ~500Mhz AMD Geode CPU, 512MB ram, I added a 1GB CF card, it has 4x100Mbit NICs, it has a slot for a PCI device, I put a bracket with another serial port on there to hook to a UPS, has a USB port, and a serial port for console access, draws a tiny amount of power.
I don't consider linux a good platform for firewall or VPN devices myself, I use OpenBSD, with pf. I have an OpenVPN from my soekris box at home to my co-located server(runs Debian), have had it hooked up for almost a year now, works great. I don't need the SSL acceleration card as my commit rate at the colo is only 1Mbit, so I don't want to push a lot of traffic.
http://www.soekris.com/net5501.htm
These things are designed from the ground up to be firewall/VPN appliances(low end mind you, your not gonna be pushing gigabits of traffic through them). The CPU on mine doesn't even have a heat sink.
nate
Or even a WRAP/ALIX system - http://pcengines.ch/alix.htm
WRAP's are old, but I've still got one powering my firewall/VPN device, years later(WAN/LAN and DMZ), and the ALIX is a drop in replacement, and I have one of those in a NAS.
Granted, you ain't gonna get multi GB throughput, same as soekris, but by goodness they are stable and reliable, zero moving parts, and as for ALIX/WRAP series, pretty neglible power requirements.
Also agree with Nate, I'd choose a version of BSD for a firewall/gateway device over Linux, either FreeBSD or OpenBSD.
Regards AM