Hi there,
What SFF machines do you recommend for a server to basically run opnsense (with a 4 port expansion NIC) and a bunch of extra disks to serve as a NAS? I was looking through Thinkcentre m720, m800 et al. I believe these allow for up to 3 disks
I know usually you’d run opnsense on a dedicated machine, but I’m a bit constrained on space so am trying to fit all in one. I don’t want to stream Linux ISOs on this NAS just to store my own files.
Yea, 3 discs isn’t much, especially since the space is cramped you’ll likely have to use 2.5" drives. I know - I’ve stuffed 3 drives in my SFF, no way to mount them so one is glued to the underside of the plastic rack. (Dell)
Then there’s power to consider - an SFF doesn’t have much of a power supply (mine maxes out at 120 watts, not sure how much of that is available on the 12v wires for sata, as it’s routed through the motherboard!). I had to buy a sata power splitter to have 3 drives.
But… My idle power is trivial (12 watts), and when it’s converting videos it peaks at 80 watts. Fan only runs when converting.
That’s the info I’m looking for. I wasn’t considering I would need 2.5’’ instead of 3’', besides glueing is not great That idle power is awesome though and why I was looking into SFF
Have you considered just getting a NAS instead?
I don’t know enough about them but how much vendor lock-in is there usually? Could I use a distribution of my choosing, or even add an extra NIC?
If you’re talking about the Synology and Qnap branded systems, there isn’t any vendor lock-in in the traditional sense, since at its core it’s just a low-power disk host. They have their own OS setups and such, but are all Linux based. You could also just build a low-power box with a bunch of disks and install something like TrueNAS or Unraid if you are so inclined.
It’s not perfect, but Goop is some magical stuff - only takes a couple blobs and it will never come loose on its own. Great thing is you can easily remove it, it’s like thick rubber cement. Just swapped out drives yesterday.
I wouldn’t do this in a business environment, but it’s my box - no one else needs to work on it.
This SFF can support two 2.5" drives, since it has a cdrom. There may be a proper drive mount if I took out the CD.
An option could be an add-on card for M2 drives. The card is cheap, but M2 drives aren’t.
There’s also add-on cards for SATA drives. I’m using one in another box, but originally bought it for the SFF.