Looking for source for inexpensive 1U rack mount MT server

RouterOS General
1

Can someone point me to a place to buy/build hardware for a MT server?

I’m looking for a price point maybe under $500 for a 1U MT router with:

3 or more ethernet interfaces (at least 1 GigE ethernet adapter)
Reasonably fast Pentium Processor
Either solid state or low capacity HD (not storing anything on it like proxy)
Reasonable amount of ram (128MB or higher should be fine I guess)

I use VRRP on a pair of these for each site for redundancy so I don’t really care if it’s the best in class hardware.

I used to buy old Intel servers off of Ebay for like $250, but they didn’t have GigE adapter and the processor was only a pentium III 1GHz

Any ideas?

2

While not a rackmount, the thin-routers that wisp-router sells work quite well for ethernet only applications and the price is right. You’d have to buy a dual-port gig-e card but there is room for one PCI card. Portwell.com has got some nice rackmount computers that are probably just what you need, but I’m not sure how much they are - we haven’t purchased one yet, but plan to soon.

3

What would be cool is two thin router like devices in one 1U enclosure each with their own power supply set up with VRRP.

Someone should sell something like that for a border router config.

4

Actually, these do exist (some will hold up to 4 motherboards). Lemme see if I can find the linky…or if someone else knows who sells these?

Edit: Here they are: http://www.casetronic.com/Products/Rackmount/1U-Rackmount/1U-Rackmount.asp - check out the Travla or Hawk series. There’s another company that makes something similar, but can’t seem to find them yet.

5

Those cases are cool.

Now what to put in them? I saw some mini motherboards listed next to the case, but couldn’t tell how fast they were.

To do past 100Mbps on the GigE port I need something decent, but not outragous and that MT supports.

6

I would think for gig-e, you’d want a Pentium based board or a healthy VIA based board. There are a lot of new VIA boards out there, but some have problems when saturating the PCI bus. We’ve never run into this with ethernet cards, but have also never tried gig-e with the thin-routers. I think there are a few members here that might have more useful info about this :slight_smile:

7

I’ve seen some RB or WRAP type boards that have 533 MHz cpus..might be enough for what u need. some of the major distributors had them.

how much traffic and policy - ing do you plan on having through this machine?

jo

8

We have NOT tried this, but it looks VERY interesting, particularly as a high power wireless router.

http://www.logicsupply.com/product_info.php/cPath/78_75/products_id/490

Anyone have any experience or comments?

George

9

It is a border router so there would be a few policies on it for shaping and filtering traffic.

10

I’m experimenting with the 1U 14" rack mount CSE-513L from supermicro. The motherboard faces backwards so your ethernet ports are forward. I’m pretty sure I can get a working MT prototype for under $500.

http://www.supermicro.com/products/chassis/1U/513/SC513L-260.cfm

If anyone is interested, I can send more detail.

11

There are decent boxes, we have 2 of them.
http://www.supermicro.com/products/system/1U/5015/SYS-5015M-MF.cfm

The case/ps/mobo (superserver) is like $500 from newegg, and then whatever is costs for the cpu and ram. Definately the best way to go for a router I think.

Sam

12

This is exactly what we do. We have bunches of these out there.

The latest ones we build use

SC512L ( the rear-facing )
P8SCI ( motherboard with dual gig ( broadcom chip ) )
snk-p0011 ( heat sink )
cse-pt66 ( air duct )
cse-rr1u-x ( riser card ) NOTE!! this motherboard is 3.3V pci only!
rb-44 ( we had it modified to 3.3V by wisp-router )
P4 2.66ghz / 512mb / 64MB DOM with lvl 5..

total cost ~ $800 or so.. + time to build..

two gig ports and 4 10/100 ports…

They work great.

Richard

13

I use 3 of the super micro boxes..
Keep in mind they use 2.5" HDAs…

They are ROCK solid..

They produce a HUGE amount of fan noise… (For data center use only !!)

The GIG ports are flakey in some earlyer RouterOS releases, so only use later versions of RouterOS…

Craig

14

The 513L-160’s come with 3.5, I’d have to purchase the optional 2.5 bracket. But I’ll be using the IDE Flash from MT. Easier for field maintenance I would suspect.

15

You can go into the BIOS and change the fan setting from SERVER to WORKSTATION and you’ll be amazed, they quiet down to the point you can almost wisper and be heard : )

16

I wil give it a try "cus I have two in the data center and I can here them above all the other 12 servers (Proliant 580s and all)

Craig