Thanks for some additional fleabay search terms :) On Sat, Dec 17, 2016 at 2:59 PM, Nick Holland <n...@holland-consulting.net> wrote: > On 12/14/16 20:39, Aaron Mason wrote: >> All >> >> I'm looking for a 1U appliance that I can re-purpose into a firewall >> using OpenBSD. I've tried the near-free method by using an old Lacie >> Ethernet Disk appliance I had lying around, but it turns out the >> onboard SATA chipset is toast on this particular unit (it freezes at >> CDBOOT when it detects hard drives and the BIOS freezes when I set it >> to IDE mode with drives attached, plus it only has one onboard NIC and >> one PCI slot, so I can't install another SATA card without removing >> the other NIC I installed), so I'm looking for other options that fit >> a limited budget. > > heh. Little secret: if you look in many data centers, you will find > lots of 1U boxes with various titles -- security appliances, load > balancing devices, etc. A lot of them, under the covers, are just PCs. > And a lot of data centers have 'em rotting on the racks after they have > been turned off and replaced, but no motivation to remove them. > > Just cleaned out some stuff from one of our data centers -- we had a > three authentication devices and a couple "security appliances" that all > turned out to have the same SuperMicro board on them...some with Pentium > D, others with P4s...but both could pump a lot of packets through > gigabit NICs (two on board). The security appliances were kinda cool in > that they have a LCD screen that looks like it could be accessed through > a USB serial port (better yet, when you powered up the box, the LCD > panel put up an advertisement, not for the security appliance maker, but > for the LCD panel...including a website. Bet there are docs there! :) > (I once programmed the LCD panel of a Novell server to say, "WINDOWS > SUCKS". Wasn't noticed for years, but when it was, my name was quickly > assumed as being responsible) > > We also had a couple odd little "load balancers" -- five NIC ports. My > coworkers were skeptical about it being a standard PC under the cover. > Haven't tried to boot OpenBSD on them yet, but turns out the thing has a > 128M SATA DiskOnModule (flash memory on a SATA board), a 1G CF card, and > a SATA hard disk in the box. Again, all in one U. > > And I'll admit there's a certain fun in bringing up another OS on > something like that. And I HAVE to at least try to bring up OpenBSD on > them...so I can wipe the media before the hw is disposed of. (Company > policy says "overwrite entire disk with random data", who's got the > fastest random number generator in town? OpenBSD, of course!) > > Nick. >
-- Aaron Mason - Programmer, open source addict I've taken my software vows - for beta or for worse
