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.

  • @just_another_personEnglish
    14•5 months ago

    SFF, and “a buncha disks” don’t really go together. It really depends on how much space yodu need, and whether the space saving or more important, or the disk redundancy.

    That being said, have a look at some of the Fractal Design cases (they make beautiful stuff), or Lian Li.

    • @[email protected]English
      2•5 months ago

      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.

      • @[email protected]OPEnglish
        1•5 months ago

        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

          • @[email protected]OPEnglish
            1•5 months ago

            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?

            • @just_another_personEnglish
              2•5 months ago

              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.

        • @[email protected]English
          1•5 months ago

          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.

    • @[email protected]OPEnglish
      1•5 months ago

      I don’t need much redundancy, as I have off-site backups and in case something goes wrong I don’t need to restore the files quickly