Hi Sebastian, On Wed, May 02, 2012 at 01:07:20PM +0200, Sebastian Fohler wrote: > Hi, > > I'm trying to build a small size loadbalancing maschine which fit's into > a small 19" rackmountable case. > Are there any experiences which some specific hardware, for example ATOM > boards or something similiar? > Can someone recomment anything special?
I'm well placed to say it's quite hard to find nice hardware for this. There are two important points to consider : - the number of NICs - the type of NICs The number of NICs depends on what you want to do. Two NICs are not that hard to find, but more become complex and remove a lot of choice. The type of NIC is very important too. Atoms are very commonly sold with Realtek chips which are the lowest quality you will ever find. Not only the CPU usage will remain high at moderate traffic rates, but you'll surely experience those annoying lockups at high rates that you don't want to experiment in a LB. Now depending on the amount of processing power you need, ALIX boards from PC Engines might be excellent. They're running on a 500 MHz Geode, are totally fanless (and even without a heatsink), but are limited to 10/100 interfaces and 256 MB of RAM. There are some nice Atom boards at Commell but they come with a fan and need some airflow to keep cool. And they're not necessarily cheap depending on your budget. Hoping this helps, Willy
