Dell PowerEdge R220 - Sophos XG Home v18

Hi Mike,

that will run okay, putting a VM on it will slow it down too much. If you had normal CPU then that would be okay.

Just remember to plug two live connections into the ports so you can assign WAN and LAN during installation.

Ian

Many thanks Ian

I agree re the virtual aspect, unless you're running better tin and decent datastores.  

These are the CPU options, but I'm not keen on ramping up the W usage.

• Intel Xeon E3-1220 V3 - 4-Core 3.10Ghz (8MB Cache, 5.00GTs, 80W)   +£42.00 [31]
• Intel Xeon E3-1226 V3 - 4-Core 3.30Ghz (8MB Cache, 5.00GTs, 84W)   +£93.60 [1]
• Intel Xeon E3-1230 V3 - 4-Core 3.30Ghz (8MB Cache, 5.00GTs, 80W)   +£90.00 [2]
• Intel Xeon E3-1240L V3 - 4-Core 2.00Ghz (8MB Cache, 5.00GTs, 25W)   +£90.00 [7]
• Intel Xeon E3-1246 V3 - 4-Core 3.50Ghz (8MB Cache, 5.00GTs, 84W)   +£150.00 [3]
• Intel Xeon E3-1270 V3 - 4-Core 3.50Ghz (8MB Cache, 5.00GTs, 80W)   +£114.00 [20]
• Intel Xeon E3-1271 V3 - 4-Core 3.60Ghz (8MB Cache, 5.00GTs, 80W)   +£132.00 [1]
• Intel Xeon E3-1275 V3 - 4-Core 3.50Ghz (8MB Cache, 5.00GTs, 84W)   +£180.00 [1]

Previously had a working V18 install, so would look to do a restore potentially, but not sure how the restore process likes different hardware etc.  I've done the restore process with the same hardware with zero issues.  I was flipping between pfsense, Untangle and Sophos.

I have ports on my switch VLAN'd for build purposes, so I can do as much of the install as possible.  

The setup is Draytek ADSL modem in bridge mode connected up to firewall.

To be honest, for the performance you need to run the home version, you would be better off with a desktop style PC and additional network card.  An R220 is rather overkill.

Hi Tim,

Already got additional 2 and 4 port PCI-E network cards.

I was interested as the R220 seem to be an ok price circa £250 etc.  Some of the Dell PCs I was looking at are more £500, but going to look at the outlet store later re the Optiplex 3070.

I am hoping for a small wall rack, funds permitting later in year to go in the loft.  Funds permitting re cabling the house, which will involve chasing walls out downstairs. 

Cheers,

Mike

Hi Mike,

my unit is a e3-1225v5 on a ASUS server motherboard with an additional Intel dual NIC. It idles about 20w and get very excited at reboot time. I haven't seen it increase in power under heavy load because basically my unit runs about 10% or less CPU most of the time.

The unit only has the CPU power supply fans. The hardest part was and is trying to locate a powersupply small enough, under 300w.

My current internet is 50/20 mb/s and we do audio and video streaming (4k) with a number of other devices that are online all the time.

Now the recommendation for home users is get the fastest CPU, not the most  powerful one.

I hope that helps.

Ian

I hate spellchecker. My unit is about 2 years old.

Although there will be a point where no matter how powerful your CPU is, current (and networking speeds for the next 3 years) won't ever be able to get close to the maximum performance.

I would be helpful to collate a list of CPUs that work well with the XG.

Also, those processors are quite old and not sure can still get them. Most of the models are now at v5 or v6 revision and run better.

I have played with a number of CPUs and the e3-1225 appears to be the optimum from my point of view and I try where possible to use server motherboards eg small ones because they have less heat generating unused chips.

Ian

rfcat_vk said:

Hi Mike,

my unit is a e3-1225v5 on a ASUS server motherboard with an additional Intel dual NIC. It ideas about 20w and get veery excited at reboot time. I haven't seen it increase in power under heavy load because basically my unit runs about 10% or less CPU most of the time.

The unit only has the CPU power supply fans. The hardest part was and is trying to locate a powersuplly small enough, under 300w.

My current internet is 50/20 mb/s and we do audio and video streaming (4k) with a number of other devices that are online all the time.

Now the recommendation for home users is get the fastest CPU, not the most  powerful one.

I hope that helps.

Iab

 

By the statement "Now the recommendation for home users is get the fastest CPU, not the most  powerful one." I assume you're referring to raw clock speed.  Is this down to Snort not supporting multiple threads from what I have read (correct me if I'm wrong :) )

Being in the UK, need to work out the real cost of a higher TDP over a year etc. as I know you can shoot yourself in the foot if you're not careful (buy twice etc)..

Hi mIke,

yes, the current implementation of snort is single threaded and usually there is one less snort than CPU cores. That is partly the reason why speed step is reduced or turned off so snort does not have to ramp up the CPU speed.

My current unit has a TDP of 80w.

Ian

Hi mIke,

yes, the current implementation of snort is single threaded and usually there is one less snort than CPU cores. That is partly the reason why speed step is reduced or turned off so snort does not have to ramp up the CPU speed.

My current unit has a TDP of 80w.

Ian

I was thinking about seeing what an i3-9100T CPU would be like for the XG - it's a low power CPU at 25W TDP - so should be a lot cheaper to run.

I would imagine it could be capable of 3GbE throughput so no problem there...this is going by comparing the performance of the CPU benchmarks.

You have to think that these things are on 24/7 and at 14p/kwh a 65W CPU would cost approx £90 per year, where a 25W would be £30.66.

After 3 years that would save £180 (probably more with the rising price of electricity).

The R220 will eat that, and wouldn't be surprised if it costs £30 per month to run - think overall it will have a power draw of about 180W, that's going by the hosting cost calculator I have based upon average typical usage - £220 per year at 14p is what that would equate to...kind of pays for a brand new OptiPlex 3070 with i3 (if that CPU is strong enough) in 3 years.

Hi Tim,

I've been looking at the i3-9100T too

The R220 I've been looking at is specifically the 25W TDP CPU version 

https://www.bargainhardware.co.uk/dell-r220-1u-2-lff-nhs-sata-nhsp-configure-to-order

This is the machine in the outlet store I am considering

https://outlet.euro.dell.com/Online/SecondaryInventorySearch.aspx?c=uk&cs=ukdfb1&l=en&s=dfb&sign=PXhcOSHtr1T4IOw%2fPR7UdRz8nSDgISaZpb5lbGXc%2fJuz0H5KB8O0qXxfAI8N3DcBg7x9q28IpsAfyOeg7zXg9gSAOKzEG%2f1ocHerl5SN0ZNbY9hfcNxWqPMt6W4AEF6zMJ%2f0ziWjk60UQF56CAmJ2UsPziU7jy%2b9Vd5HnRaDy%2bGDCDivUALc1VaokdhjbmZ%2bXZfaGEWIBZ6aI2K43BIyKOFKGUozUafK0ykge33vJvM%3d

Yes those costs can run away very quickly, I have an older i7 PC with Nvidia 1660 graphics card installed, it munches electricity when it's being pushed.

I've been removing a pond from our garden as fed up with the running costs.  Pump 130W, 55W UV, air pump 30W I think all 24/7 - adds up.  I think last year with water, electric and other stuff the pond costs £500-700.  Had enough of that!

Servers just eat power, it's not just the CPU it's all the other components that servers have which desktop machines don't.

At the DR site, for example, this is the graph taken from iLO for a machine which is sitting idle - it's an old DL380p Gen 8 with a single E5-2630 V1 CPUs, part of a cluster array and only designed to host the critical production virtual machines.

Considering it's sitting there doing nothing, and the CPUs only use the power that they need - it's quite power hungry.

For those with VDSL / ADSL connections - I often had wondered how something like this would work with the Sophos XG.

https://www.draytek.co.uk/products/business/vigornic-132

Install this into a PC, and then use the onboard network port for LAN.

Hi Tim,

Indeed, all the other components add up to the consumption.  the HP DL380 range have always been pretty power hungry.  I've worked in the past with the DL580 servers and the power on those is just crazy.

I've seen a couple of Dell docs that imply the Dell R220 would draw circa 50W in consumption, so pretty good.  Keep meaning to order a power reader from Wickes to see what draw devices have.  Might see if my neighbor has one as he's in the building trade.  

Will do some further reading and digging.

Hi foks,

as far as I can tell you are basing your power consumption on devices that run MS applications and my experience with them compared to UTM and XG firewalls shows they run less.

As I have indicate previously my current XG uses about 20-25w 24/7. It is based on a server motherboard.

Actual power consumption calculations 

1/. I have solar panels installed so let use assume no grid consumption for 7 hors a day worst case.

2/. 0.025*17*365*0.24= $37.00 approx a year.

Ian

Interestingly the DL360p used more power out the box than the DL380p - we put that down to the fact that the fans have to spin faster to move the same volume of air through, plus they seem to work harder as I guess with smaller heat-sinks you need more air.

I expect you're right, ramping up of the fans as it does POST.

I've been working more and more with Dell PowerEdge recently and starting to prefer it from certain aspects.  HPE have lost their way with some of the kit imho.

I'll be ordering up the Dell R220 today, what's the worst that can happen, it gets sold on :) 

Good luck with the R220 - be interesting to see the results you get.

I agree re HP - it was when they started charging for BIOS updates, where you needed a support pack at huge cost to be able to download them, that a lot of my customers switched to Dell.

HP shot themselves in the foot over that one - after all, who really wants to pay for fixes to a system that you have already paid for...