PFSense router, SuperMicro Chasis

[Antria]

https://www.supermicro.nl/products/chassis/1U/503/SC503L-200.cfm

 

So this is the chasis I want so I can very neatly hook it up in my rack with all the connectors in the front to align well with my switch.

But I can't for the life of me figure out which motherboard fits. As far as I can see the I/O are fixed with no backplate on the chasis there.

 

Also, have you seen other 1U chasis that could do this? Have the I/O in the front and work great as a rack mounted router that is.

 

Edit: NVM I found it.  https://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/ATOM/ICH9/X7SPE-HF-D525.cfm

 

[Tedster]

3 minutes ago, Antria said:

https://www.supermicro.nl/products/chassis/1U/503/SC503L-200.cfm

 

So this is the chasis I want so I can very neatly hook it up in my rack with all the connectors in the front to align well with my switch.

But I can't for the life of me figure out which motherboard fits. As far as I can see the I/O are fixed with no backplate on the chasis there.

 

Also, have you seen other 1U chasis that could do this? Have the I/O in the front and work great as a rack mounted router that is.

Says it right on the page, support for maximum motherboard size - 9.6" x 9.6".

So you'll need to look up the sizes of standards I guess to find out which will be supported.

[Antria]

1 minute ago, Tedster said:

Says it right on the page, support for maximum motherboard size - 9.6" x 9.6".

So you'll need to look up the sizes of standards I guess to find out which will be supported.

That's not enough information. I saw that. If you look at the chasis the I/O is fixed and you need a motherboard that can fit those exact holes. You can't get a motherboard with 3 LAN ports for instance, because it only has I/O cutouts for two. See what I mean?

[jj9987]

In the manual:

The SC503 chassis includes permanent and removable standoffs in locations used by Micro ATX 9.6"x9.6" motherboards. 

[Tedster]

Just now, Antria said:

That's not enough information. I saw that. If you look at the chasis the I/O is fixed and you need a motherboard that can fit those exact holes. You can't get a motherboard with 3 LAN ports for instance, because it only has I/O cutouts for two. See what I mean?

So I see. I thought that was just an IO shield...

[Electronics Wizardy]

2 minutes ago, Antria said:

That's not enough information. I saw that. If you look at the chasis the I/O is fixed and you need a motherboard that can fit those exact holes. You can't get a motherboard with 3 LAN ports for instance, because it only has I/O cutouts for two. See what I mean?

You need to use certian supermicro boards in it. don't just buy the chassis, but it with the board and psu.

[Tedster]

1 minute ago, Tedster said:

So I see. I thought that was just an IO shield...

[Antria]

Just now, Electronics Wizardy said:

You need to use certian supermicro boards in it. don't just buy the chassis, but it with the board and psu.

I'd like to but they're all sold separately from all vendors and they don't specify on the page of the chasis which models to get. On the other hand, the model of the motherboard it does specify which chasis it's optimized for.

[Electronics Wizardy]

1 minute ago, Antria said:

I'd like to but they're all sold separately from all vendors and they don't specify on the page of the chasis which models to get. On the other hand, the model of the motherboard it does specify which chasis it's optimized for.

how about something like a used dell r210?

[Mikensan]

You could spend $200-$300 on a dell Rx10 and just virtualize pfsense. Majority of those come with a 4 port NIC. Only sucks if you need to reboot the entire host for one reason or another.

[Falconevo]

I do something similar with a 1U half depth case with an AsRock C2750D4I but also have a PCI-E riser for a 4 port Intel GB card solid LACP support for LAGG interfaces.

 

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

 

Gives me BMC out of bounds console access, something you may want to look at for a firewall (in case you cock the config up) 

[brwainer]

if you measure the size of a standard IO shield, you will see that it is more than 1U tall. With Supermicro 1U chassis, they include 2 different plates that between them will match all varieties of Supermicro motherboards. When putting a non-supermicro motherboard into one of these chassis, the options are either to cut down the IO shield to fit that opening, or not have any shield in place at all.

 

When looking at barebones systems that have an appropriate motherboard pre-installed, you may want to look at the SC505 and SC513 chassis as well. The SC505 in particular seems to have quite a few modern options.

[Antria]

9 hours ago, brwainer said:

if you measure the size of a standard IO shield, you will see that it is more than 1U tall. With Supermicro 1U chassis, they include 2 different plates that between them will match all varieties of Supermicro motherboards. When putting a non-supermicro motherboard into one of these chassis, the options are either to cut down the IO shield to fit that opening, or not have any shield in place at all.

 

When looking at barebones systems that have an appropriate motherboard pre-installed, you may want to look at the SC505 and SC513 chassis as well. The SC505 in particular seems to have quite a few modern options.

Yes, I looked at those chassi as well. But they all had their I/O in the back and not the front. I want it in the front. This is the only one I've seen from SuperMicro that has this. And what bothers my feathers is that they don't liste which motherboards are compatible with it. The pictures are horrible small and bad and I'd have to either draw the I/O out and compare that to the motherboards or get that one I managed to find. What I want is more choices of motherboards.

[brwainer]

I just checked myself and the 503, 505, and 513 are all front IO. I wouldn't have recommended them to you if the were back IO.

 

EDIT: this one not only lists compatible motherboards, but also the prebuilt systems that use it: https://www.supermicro.com/products/chassis/1u/505/sc505-203.cfm

[Antria]

Wow thanks. I was pretty wrong there. I hope they're cheaper.

[Lurick]

Depending on how much you're willing to tolerate for noise and spend, where you plan to store it, etc. You could look at a rack-mount server like the Dell R610, it's pretty quiet after it boots up initially and if you stick it in a closet or something it should be just fine and not audible at all. You can get one with 32GB of RAM and a decent pair of Xeons for around $200 to $300 on ebay. You can toss ESXi (free) on there and run pfsense in a VM and have headroom for other VMs if you want or run pfsense on the bare metal as well.

[Antria]

On 06/01/2017 at 2:38 PM, Lurick said:

Depending on how much you're willing to tolerate for noise and spend, where you plan to store it, etc. You could look at a rack-mount server like the Dell R610, it's pretty quiet after it boots up initially and if you stick it in a closet or something it should be just fine and not audible at all. You can get one with 32GB of RAM and a decent pair of Xeons for around $200 to $300 on ebay. You can toss ESXi (free) on there and run pfsense in a VM and have headroom for other VMs if you want or run pfsense on the bare metal as well.

 

 

That is stupidly big for a router.

[Lurick]

7 minutes ago, Antria said:

That is stupidly big for a router.

It starts out as being just for a router but before you know it you've got several VMs on there to play around with different OSes and host different services.