Recommended Hardware

[AggieTex04]

I was looking to get some input on a hardware recommendation for a client. The site will be for about 800-850 users, with an unknown amount of devices being used by each. Some could use up to 3 devices or more with a computer, phone, xbox, etc, while others could use none.

Currently we were looking into getting an R510 with 2 x X5630 processors, Quad ET Intel network card (to support the 5 vlans), and 12GB ram. They will most likely be running the lite version with Anti-virus, Spy-ware, Spam enabled, as well as the paid bandwidth control application.

Does anyone have any experience with a larger network and the type of equipment needed on-site as the customer is only wanting to put a single processor E3-1230 R200 server on-site to handle this. I am just unsure if it would have the processing power, so any thoughts or experience would be helpful.

Edit: Some more information. The site is currently using a 100MB Full duplex Fiber connection.

[sky-knight]

Our NG-1000 series appliance is a basic quad core.

As long as your network cards are good, and they are attached to a solid PCI bus, you'll be fine. Dual CPU is overkill, the only time I recommend that is when you're running a PILE of AV scans on a measured crapton of inbound e-mail.

The hardware you're proposing is very similar to a box I've got defending 6000 students. Yes, it's overkill.

[AggieTex04]

Our NG-1000 series appliance is a basic quad core.

As long as your network cards are good, and they are attached to a solid PCI bus, you'll be fine. Dual CPU is overkill, the only time I recommend that is when you're running a PILE of AV scans on a measured crapton of inbound e-mail.

The hardware you're proposing is very similar to a box I've got defending 6000 students. Yes, it's overkill.

Thank you for taking the time to reply sky-knight. So a new Xeon quad core processor (Sandy Bridge) should have no problems supporting 800-1200 devices with all the Lite version features enabled and bandwidth control running at the same time? I am looking for something that could sustain all of this in real time while putting out 100mbps up and down at the same time. There is also the potential that they would upgrade the line connection speed up to the 1Gbps fiber run. Not that they would jump straight to it, but they have immediate access to any speed up to 1Gbps as it just needs to be provisioned from the ISP circuit.

If anyone else has similar sites with similar usage I would love to hear the type of hardware you are currently using and if it suits your needs.

[sky-knight]

The barrier on bandwidth has more to do with the quality of network interfaces, and the speed of the bus those interfaces are attached to than CPU/RAM resources.

Also, I must throw in the obligatory warning. Just because Untangle appears to sell Dell hardware, doesn't mean the hardware you order from Dell is the same. Dell has at least 5 mainboard variants for those servers, and it is quite possible to get one that isn't compatible.

[AggieTex04]

The barrier on bandwidth has more to do with the quality of network interfaces, and the speed of the bus those interfaces are attached to than CPU/RAM resources.

Also, I must throw in the obligatory warning. Just because Untangle appears to sell Dell hardware, doesn't mean the hardware you order from Dell is the same. Dell has at least 5 mainboard variants for those servers, and it is quite possible to get one that isn't compatible.

This is why the system was spec'd with the Intel ET Quad card as it should be able to handle the required bandwidth correct? This should bypass any problems that would arise with network interface issues as it has been tested and approved according to the wiki page of compatibility.

[sky-knight]

The GT is capable of handling what you're after, the ET is flat overkill. The bus you're attaching to, does it have enough speed to run all four interfaces a gigabit?

That's where I see most people falling short, nice NIC on crappy bus = bad day.