nas/router hybrid

[Splintter]

Hay there

 

I resently found out about pssence being a linix based os that utilizes the performance of a pc to be a router and access point.

 

I have a 100mb/s fiber connection  (witch I can upgrade up to 1000mb/s) and I have a spear 2.8ghz duel core socket 775 with 1gb of ram (max of 2gb)

 

So so my 1st question is am I going to see any performance increase over my standard Huawei wireless router?

 

I am also thinking about building an itx xeon/i7 based NAS with windows server 2015 with a cobanation of ssd's and sas drives in raid 5.

 

So here comes the complaced part.

How would pssence perform in a virtual machine on the NAS given that it would have up to 16gb of ram and plenty of cores and a ssd to be allocated to it

 

Obviously nether of the os's are going to clash on separate systems nor be that much stress on the hardware but it's the fact that Thay would be on the same system and I'm not sure how pssence would "like" the network settings of the virtual machine.

 

The reason I'm thinking of building this system is to save space and have one system performing really well and operating 24/7.

 

But is it going to worth my time and money when a i7 extreme is approximately 2500$ in my country

I already have all the hardware planed out and roughly how much it would cost

Witch I have no problems spending as I'm in the process of starting up my own pc store  (it's a 5 year plan sorta thing) and would want to be reddy for that

 

So yea any advice would be appreciated

 

Tia

Josh

[SCHISCHKA]

28 minutes ago, Splintter said:

resently found out about pssence being a linix based os that utilizes the performance of a pc to be a router and access point.

PfSense? You can do it with any Linux or bsd., even windows if you want to be a weirdo. Routers do not need a lot of power. My router has the power of a pentium II.

32 minutes ago, Splintter said:

So so my 1st question is am I going to see any performance increase over my standard Huawei wireless router

Depends on what your current router hardware is. If it has gigabit lan then no performance increase.

 

For the other question you will save some space and one power point. You won't need much ram because a router does not need much. You can also provide those services from the windows server.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Splintter]

1 hour ago, SCHISCHKA said:

PfSense? You can do it with any Linux or bsd., even windows if you want to be a weirdo. Routers do not need a lot of power. My router has the power of a pentium II.

Depends on what your current router hardware is. If it has gigabit lan then no performance increase.

 

For the other question you will save some space and one power point. You won't need much ram because a router does not need much. You can also provide those services from the windows server.

 

 

 

 

 

 

So in short it would be overkill yes?

[SCHISCHKA]

13 minutes ago, Splintter said:

So in short it would be overkill yes?

yes

[Falconevo]

I do this myself using an AsRock C2750D4I and use HyperV on Windows 2016 to split up the resources.  I don't specifically use a NAS as I use SMB 3 for access to all content on my network from the 2016 box but the principle is the same.  pfSense is working absolutely fine with my dual WAN configuration (200Mbit from VirginMedia + 52Mbit from BT Infinity 2).  I also have a second Windows 7 VM which runs on the box for a legacy Cisco VPN connection to a site, unfortunately can't use pfSense for the VPN here and don't want the MTU of my server dropping to 1200 due to shit Cisco anyconnect software.

MB - http://www.asrockrack.com/general/productdetail.asp?Model=C2750D4I#Specifications

 

Disk layout;

1x 120GB Intel SSD (AHCI) - Contains 2016 OS for HyperVisor & VM disk for pfSense and Win7 VM

 

6x 3TB WD Reds (AHCI)

JBOD layout dynamically expanded, I care very little about whats on it and its remotely backed up to an S3 bucket on a private PB CEPH cluster.

 

Let me know if you want to know more, you can certainly virtualize up the NAS however bare in mind that your disks can either be pass-through or just be VHD/VMDK based disks on the storage tier instead.  This would require some thought as you can utilise software raid if you really wanted and virtualise up all the NAS disks for SCSI VHDs.

 

 

 

 

[Mikensan]

The biggest benefit pfSense gives you is access to more RAM for more states/connections. My biggest issue when I had fiber from Verizon was the Actiontec router they supplied would lock up when I torrented. Somewhere about 1,000 states and it was toast. The next thing pfSense nets you is a very powerful and easy interface to be granular on your network. 

 

Because of power consumption, I wouldn't really use the older system and do as you stated - virtualize your firewall. Just make sure you use dedicated NIC ports for the firewall. You don't want any bleed over.

[Splintter]

7 hours ago, Falconevo said:

I do this myself using an AsRock C2750D4I and use HyperV on Windows 2016 to split up the resources.  I don't specifically use a NAS as I use SMB 3 for access to all content on my network from the 2016 box but the principle is the same.  pfSense is working absolutely fine with my dual WAN configuration (200Mbit from VirginMedia + 52Mbit from BT Infinity 2).  I also have a second Windows 7 VM which runs on the box for a legacy Cisco VPN connection to a site, unfortunately can't use pfSense for the VPN here and don't want the MTU of my server dropping to 1200 due to shit Cisco anyconnect software.

MB - http://www.asrockrack.com/general/productdetail.asp?Model=C2750D4I#Specifications

 

Disk layout;

1x 120GB Intel SSD (AHCI) - Contains 2016 OS for HyperVisor & VM disk for pfSense and Win7 VM

 

6x 3TB WD Reds (AHCI)

JBOD layout dynamically expanded, I care very little about whats on it and its remotely backed up to an S3 bucket on a private PB CEPH cluster.

 

Let me know if you want to know more, you can certainly virtualize up the NAS however bare in mind that your disks can either be pass-through or just be VHD/VMDK based disks on the storage tier instead.  This would require some thought as you can utilise software raid if you really wanted and virtualise up all the NAS disks for SCSI VHDs.

 

 

 

 

Just had a look at the asrock motherboard and it seems like a good option. With the exception of not having raid 5. But it dose have pcie 8x witch I was thinking of getting a sas controller to utilize the 4 4gb+ hdds with a 128gb ssd in raid 5, on 1st port and the same on the 2nd port For the storage side of things. and run 2 256gb in raid 0 on the motherboard for the os and vm's. As I can't move my fiber box and want the most out of the network because I will be consistently accessing storage. I was thinking that I'd just use my current router for WiFi off the nas/lan router and witch only gets used for 1 laptop and 3 android devices anyway as I generally get 300mb/s over single band connection I think this would be fine. So generally the WiFi would take care of the light dutys  and the gigabit lan on the nas/router would take care of everything else, like media and torrents and VPN.

 

I'm planning on using this http://www.silverstonetek.com/product.php?pid=452

[Splintter]

7 hours ago, Falconevo said:

I do this myself using an AsRock C2750D4I and use HyperV on Windows 2016 to split up the resources.  I don't specifically use a NAS as I use SMB 3 for access to all content on my network from the 2016 box but the principle is the same.  pfSense is working absolutely fine with my dual WAN configuration (200Mbit from VirginMedia + 52Mbit from BT Infinity 2).  I also have a second Windows 7 VM which runs on the box for a legacy Cisco VPN connection to a site, unfortunately can't use pfSense for the VPN here and don't want the MTU of my server dropping to 1200 due to shit Cisco anyconnect software.

MB - http://www.asrockrack.com/general/productdetail.asp?Model=C2750D4I#Specifications

 

Disk layout;

1x 120GB Intel SSD (AHCI) - Contains 2016 OS for HyperVisor & VM disk for pfSense and Win7 VM

 

6x 3TB WD Reds (AHCI)

JBOD layout dynamically expanded, I care very little about whats on it and its remotely backed up to an S3 bucket on a private PB CEPH cluster.

 

Let me know if you want to know more, you can certainly virtualize up the NAS however bare in mind that your disks can either be pass-through or just be VHD/VMDK based disks on the storage tier instead.  This would require some thought as you can utilise software raid if you really wanted and virtualise up all the NAS disks for SCSI VHDs.

 

 

 

 

Just had a look at the asrock motherboard and it seems like a good option. With the exception of not having raid 5. But it dose have pcie 8x witch I was thinking of getting a sas controller to utilize the 4 4gb+ hdds with a 128gb ssd in raid 5, on 1st port and the same on the 2nd port For the storage side of things. and run 2 256gb in raid 0 on the motherboard for the os and vm's. As I can't move my fiber box and want the most out of the network because I will be consistently accessing storage. I was thinking that I'd just use my current router for WiFi off the nas/lan router and witch only gets used for 1 laptop and 3 android devices anyway as I generally get 300mb/s over single band connection I think this would be fine. So generally the WiFi would take care of the light dutys  and the gigabit lan on the nas/router would take care of everything else, like media and torrents and VPN.

 

I'm planning on using this http://www.silverstonetek.com/product.php?pid=452

[Falconevo]

An additional HBA to get RAID5 would be viable in the AsRock board, I don't personally advocate RAID5 as a sensible option anywhere.  Also remember its a server based motherboard so needs ECC RAM and has a larger than normal boot time. 

 

On the plus side it has IPMI and remote console management via the network, so its really helpful for dealing with the machines power remotely.

[Splintter]

my understanding is that raid 5 is the only raid that i can use a ssd/hdd as cashe. please corect me if im wrong

what raid setup would you recommend?

Edited December 15, 2016 by Splintter
changes