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Astaro 8.3 - 9.01 Hardware Compatability Questions

I'm obviously new to the forums - hello scott [:D]
I've fallen in love with the ease of use of many Astaro 120s and 220s that we use at my workplace, and am looking forward to building a low profile home PC to use with the free home use license. I have a few questions to start off, and my chosen hardware follows them.

In no particular order:

1) How much hard drive space is needed or recommended for logging?
2) How much ram does the OS support?
3) Does it have drivers for the newer motherboard chipsets?
4) Would there be any benefit to a SATA 2 vs SATA 3 SSD hard drive?
5) Does it utilize multicore processors to the fullest extent?
6) Would there be a benefit to using an i7 over a Core i5 (where the i7 supports hyperthreading for example)
7) Does it have any sort of temperature sensing support? if i supply the chasis with an adjustable speed fan, does the OS utilize this, or at the very least, does it let the BIOS handle this and not override the functionality of it?
8) Will the built in drivers support advanced features of any of the below hardware (such as VLANs for example, on the nics)?
9) Is there any way to update the drivers with a linux version from the following hardware manufacturers, if needed (and applicable)?

Intel EXPI9400PTBLK 10/ 100/ 1000Mbps PCI-Express Gigabit Copper Connection for Servers - OEM
Antec ISK 310-150 Black / Silver 0.8mm cold rolled steel Mini-ITX Desktop Computer Case 150W Power Supply
Intel BOXDQ77KB LGA 1155 Intel Q77 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 Mini ITX Intel Motherboard
Athena Power AP-MFATX40 400W Mini ITX 80 PLUS BRONZE Certified Active PFC Power Supply

Intel Core i7-3770S Ivy Bridge 3.1GHz (3.9GHz Turbo) LGA 1155 65W Quad-Core Desktop Processor Intel HD Graphics 4000 BX80637I73770S
-OR-
Intel Core i5-3450S Ivy Bridge 2.8GHz (3.5GHz Turbo) LGA 1155 65W Quad-Core Desktop Processor Intel HD Graphics 2500 BX80637I53450S

CORSAIR 8GB (2 x 4GB) 204-Pin DDR3 SO-DIMM DDR3 1333 Laptop Memory Model CMSO8GX3M2A1333C9

Thanks to all.

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0 BarryG over 13 years ago

Hi,

4) An SSD will only make a noticeable difference at home if you're using the http proxy CACHING, and even then, you probably won't notice unless you have a lot of users.

5) 4 or 8 cores are complete overkill for home use unless your internet connection is over 100mbps. An i7 is extreme overkill. Get a low-power i3 or i5 at most.

An Atom can handle over 50mbps, and an i3 should be able to handle almost any home connection.

8) VLANs work fine if you have good NICs (e.g. Intel or Broadcom).
See https://community.sophos.com/products/unified-threat-management/astaroorg/f/53/t/32409 for an example using a Netgear 'smart' switch.

Note that you still need at least 2 NICs, as configuring the VLAN NIC must be done from another interface.

10) v9 is in beta. See UTM 9 Public Beta - Astaro User Bulletin Board or wait for the release.

See https://community.sophos.com/products/unified-threat-management/astaroorg/f/52/t/27167
for hardware known to work.

Barry
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0 HopefulSoul over 13 years ago in reply to BarryG

Hi,

4) An SSD will only make a noticeable difference at home if you're using the http proxy CACHING, and even then, you probably won't notice unless you have a lot of users.

5) 4 or 8 cores are complete overkill for home use unless your internet connection is over 100mbps. An i7 is extreme overkill. Get a low-power i3 or i5 at most.

An Atom can handle over 50mbps, and an i3 should be able to handle almost any home connection.

8) VLANs work fine if you have good NICs (e.g. Intel or Broadcom).
See http://www.astaro.org/astaro-gateway-products/management-networking-logging-reporting/25335-netgear-vlan-switch-config-guide.html for an example using a Netgear 'smart' switch.

Note that you still need at least 2 NICs, as configuring the VLAN NIC must be done from another interface.

10) v9 is in beta. See UTM 9 Public Beta - Astaro User Bulletin Board or wait for the release.

See http://www.astaro.org/astaro-gateway-products/hardware-installation-up2date-licensing/28426-unofficial-hardware-compatibility-list-hcl.html
for hardware known to work.

Barry

thanks for the further followup. While i do love complete overkill, my budget would steer me towards i5 overkill, and thanks to your help plus scott's a smaller cheaper SSD. I'll still be wanting to use an SSD for the less power consumption, quieter operation, faster reboot times, and expected (at this point in the SSD game) longevity over the bigger brother mechanical drives. [:)]
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0 HopefulSoul over 13 years ago in reply to BarryG

Hi,

4) An SSD will only make a noticeable difference at home if you're using the http proxy CACHING, and even then, you probably won't notice unless you have a lot of users.

5) 4 or 8 cores are complete overkill for home use unless your internet connection is over 100mbps. An i7 is extreme overkill. Get a low-power i3 or i5 at most.

An Atom can handle over 50mbps, and an i3 should be able to handle almost any home connection.

8) VLANs work fine if you have good NICs (e.g. Intel or Broadcom).
See http://www.astaro.org/astaro-gateway-products/management-networking-logging-reporting/25335-netgear-vlan-switch-config-guide.html for an example using a Netgear 'smart' switch.

Note that you still need at least 2 NICs, as configuring the VLAN NIC must be done from another interface.

10) v9 is in beta. See UTM 9 Public Beta - Astaro User Bulletin Board or wait for the release.

See http://www.astaro.org/astaro-gateway-products/hardware-installation-up2date-licensing/28426-unofficial-hardware-compatibility-list-hcl.html
for hardware known to work.

Barry

thanks for the further followup. While i do love complete overkill, my budget would steer me towards i5 overkill, and thanks to your help plus scott's a smaller cheaper SSD. I'll still be wanting to use an SSD for the less power consumption, quieter operation, faster reboot times, and expected (at this point in the SSD game) longevity over the bigger brother mechanical drives. [:)]
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0 TheDrew over 13 years ago in reply to HopefulSoul

Hi HopefulSoul,

As the guys here have said, an i7 is way overkill for home use. The current generation 120's use an Intel Atom as their processor and the 220's use a lower end Pentium chip (not sure what family currently) so even an i5 is overkill

You said you use ASG's at work so I assume you're the IT guy? If you're dead set on using an i7, look into building an i7 based server and run ESXi on it. [:)] My i7 at home runs two instances of Astaro (HA cluster), as well as CentOS Linux, Windows Home Server (WHS), Windows Server 2008r2, Server 2003r2, XP (older games), and even Windows 98 (ancient games).
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