Hardware SERVER: Buying a Network Card - Fibre - Gigabit - Lan

[Mick]

Hi all,

Need some advice from the WINDOWS SERVER Guru's , I am pretty good at linux server administration been doing it going on 10 years+ now... but apart from a microsoft MCP lol, I do not have tons of Microsoft Server experience.

So this is the scenario, I bought another one of those HP Micro Servers as my last one is now one kick ass nas drive, for those that do not already have one I can tell you for £100 (£200 with £100 cash back) you won't get anything near these mini monsters!!!!!!!

Right, I am thinking of installing Microsoft Windows Home Server (I am aware that MS is not supporting it no more)... however I don't think I need to buy a proper MS server as it is just for home ... but do let me know your thoughts please on this also!

Here comes the networking part, I was thinking about buying a PCI fibre card for the HP Microserver as I have a netgear unmanaged 1000mbit 24port switch with 2 fibre ports.

I wanted to get rid of my draytek router (or just come out the switch for wifi) and have my broadband come straight into the 1000mbit port built into the HP, then the server software would then distribute traffic via fibre to the switch?

What do you think of this sort of setup , I have never used fibre, would not even know what to do lol.

Thank you

Mick

 

[jfish]

so you want to turn your HP server into a router/firewal etc .. I personally wouldnt allow Windows to run any kind of routing software or firewall.

However as per your original question, yes what you propose is possible, as in tinternet into one NIC on HP server and fibre from HP server so switch.

 

[oneman]

If you insist on using windows server (odd if you have a lot of linux server) then WHS is based on Windows Server, just with a easier to manage GUI. But personally I would just install W2K8 R2 or W2K12 Core Version (without the mickey mouse metro interface). There is a custom BIOS available which you can use in conjunction with daz loader to activate it.

The setup you describe is pretty much what I am using with my VM superhub in modem mode, plugged into my Windows Server which is my router and then a TP-Link WAP to provide wireless.

I had a HP ML110 G5 (with 4GB of RAM) which is not much faster then N54L Microserver. So its definitely doable, took about 2 minutes to set up Routing and Remote Access, plus it ran FTP (filezilla), file sharing, SABNZB, Sickbeard, CouchPotato, logmein (for remote access) and some other stuff. You can also stuff in a video card and using it for media playback as well.

For network, I would probably stick with ethernet, You will need a low profile PCI-E card, you can get them off fleabay for a few quid else you can get something like this which features hardware accelerated TCP stack,

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Intel-EXPI9301CTBLK-PRO1000-Network-PCIex/dp/B001CY0P7G

 

[Mick]

@jfish, @oneman

Thanks Guys.

I was thinking about fedora/debian with Samba installed, but wanted the flexibility of the active directory (there is a work around for WHS), I know that running on a distro like fedora, or even centos (bit more mainstream) would way outperform any windows setup, and I could install nginx/apache too (I do not like windows versions)... but I also wanted it as a test machine to play around with windows server (get a little more experience so to speak).

Also with APF and Iptables, I could potentially run a very good FREE firewall.

Also I have two WINDOWS 8 bloody machines, not sure that samba will work with these feckers!

And one Windows 8 machine is really important as my son takes liberties with staying up.

Thanks for the heads up about the low profile, I also have an older model of the server, but this is a raid nasdrive without any PCI cards

Do not know what to do now lol!!!

Test machine - Stable Fedora - whm Server...

Mick

 

[oneman]

If you want to mess about with active directory then you might as well install the full W2K12 server.

 

[Him Her]

I don't understand what you're objective is?

Sounds like you should install plenty of memory and disk and run VMware on the Microserver to me though. Experiment with different scenarios all on the same box. Cant see why Windows 8 would be an issue with Samba?

 

[Mick]

I replied to this earlier lol, but you are right @Him Her ...

I was reading articles about samba and windows 8 compatibility before I was about to setup a fedora Distro.

Anyway, I am now looking to run centos with samba... as a domain controller, but still in two minds about the draytek router infront of the HP Microserver.

I would like to run APF, IPTABLES and DHCPd on the microserver sitting on the router then a fibre card into my switch?

But I am not sure as a security point of view if I should front end the HP Microserver and have a samba controller, APF, IPTABLES, DHCP all on one machine directly on the internet output of the modem.

What you think?

Mick

 

[Him Her]

I replied to this earlier lol, but you are right @Him Her ...

I was reading articles about samba and windows 8 compatibility before I was about to setup a fedora Distro.

Anyway, I am now looking to run centos with samba... as a domain controller, but still in two minds about the draytek router infront of the HP Microserver.

I would like to run APF, IPTABLES and DHCPd on the microserver sitting on the router then a fibre card into my switch?

But I am not sure as a security point of view if I should front end the HP Microserver and have a samba controller, APF, IPTABLES, DHCP all on one machine directly on the internet output of the modem.

What you think?

Mick

Personally, I'm not 100% in agreement with @jfish on the Windows doing firewall stuff but as a general rule I would want my firewall separate from my OS. The Draytek provides a good hardware solution at the price and you can open ports for the services you need so I'd keep the Draytek and do your stuff behind it. There are hardware firewalls with more function/flexibility (i.e. check out the m0n0wall project that can be implemented on PC engine hardware) but I see no improvement in security terms.

Actually, the majority of security threats at the moment are against public services i.e. one of your open ports - your firewall will let them through because you said so? Erm, most attacks on my servers are on ports 25, 80 and 110 at the moment and I have to have them open so a firewall is pretty much useless lol

 

[Mick]

Would you guys go for a 1000Mbit 4 port low profile Card or a Fibre card directly connected to the network switch?

 

[Him Her]

Can't see there's much in it TBH. The fibre port runs at 1Gb/s I assume so no performance difference. Fibre cards can be had for much the same price so no cost benefit.

I might like to be a bit flash and have the fibre on display though!

 

[Mick]

I might like to be a bit flash and have the fibre on display though!

Lol, and it would be a new experience too.

I do not know how the fibre network cards work but I thought the cards was 4gb, I am not sure about throughput because of other hardware... Etc

I think I will try it as the fibre network cards are like 30 quid, can anyone with experience give me tips on what to do and buy?

 

[oneman]

AFAIK, fibre network works work at 1gb, same as ethernet. The main advantage is that you can do longer cable runs and its less suspect to electric interference so useful for connecting distributed switches to a backbone in large buildings.

You can get Fibre Channel running Fibre Channel Protocol which works at speeds of 2, 4, 8, 16 and 32gb, but this is used for SAN and not network. Though to complicate matters you can also get FC over ethernet which is not that widespread at the moment and pretty pricey.

Finally don't forget that iSCSI giving SAN features running over standard ethernet. This is done at stack level (i.e. in software) though you can get NIC with iSCSI hardware acceleration. This would commonly be used for example when using NAS to provide storage for Virtual Machines as you can do live migrations and backups.

Not sure about going for a quad port card, unless you really need the through put like serving 100's of users then I wouldn't bother for a home setup.

Just to give an example, my test nzb indexing setup has web server and PHP code running on one box, connected to MySQL database server via a 1gb direct connection and its about as quick as running it on the same server using mechanical drive. I've tested my W2K12 server and done playback of HD MKV playback of 5 different files to 5 different devices with out problems. This is with the server and 3 devices connected to same gb switch and then 2 devices at the other end of a cascaded 100mb switch.

 

[Mick]

AFAIK, fibre network works work at 1gb, same as ethernet. The main advantage is that you can do longer cable runs and its less suspect to electric interference so useful for connecting distributed switches to a backbone in large buildings.

You can get Fibre Channel running Fibre Channel Protocol which works at speeds of 2, 4, 8, 16 and 32gb, but this is used for SAN and not network. Though to complicate matters you can also get FC over ethernet which is not that widespread at the moment and pretty pricey.

Finally don't forget that iSCSI giving SAN features running over standard ethernet. This is done at stack level (i.e. in software) though you can get NIC with iSCSI hardware acceleration. This would commonly be used for example when using NAS to provide storage for Virtual Machines as you can do live migrations and backups.

Not sure about going for a quad port card, unless you really need the through put like serving 100's of users then I wouldn't bother for a home setup.

Just to give an example, my test nzb indexing setup has web server and PHP code running on one box, connected to MySQL database server via a 1gb direct connection and its about as quick as running it on the same server using mechanical drive. I've tested my W2K12 server and done playback of HD MKV playback of 5 different files to 5 different devices with out problems. This is with the server and 3 devices connected to same gb switch and then 2 devices at the other end of a cascaded 100mb switch.

Thank you for that detailed explanation... cheers mate!

Yeah I have setup the centos server - minimalist, and will yum the things I need.

Just still not sure to put it on the front end of my system... but really want to try it, I can build a pretty robust firewall on linux, but it is the whole samba - router/firewall concept that is making me nervous lol... to be honest I do not have anything that important stored at home.

I want a box that will be the DHCP server, Samba Server, Firewall, maybe even a local intranet.

I can do this all on linux distros (gone with centos), I can control the flow into the home via iptables and eth rules... and I can also log/block/drop packets/attempts via APF and rule sets.

Just wanted to get peoples thoughts

Mick

 

[Him Her]

Have a separate NIC for external (public) connections and then you can open the required ports only on the internal (private) network. Then your server can be at the front-end without compromising security.

In my experience this works very well.

 

[Mick]

Cheers @Him Her

The hp micro-server has a built in 1000gbit LAN port, I was gonna use that on eth0 and block ports and run apf rules on that...

Modem plugs into LAN port

Then fibre to the switch?

What you guys think???

Mick

 

[Him Her]

Cheers @Him Her

The hp micro-server has a built in 1000gbit LAN port, I was gonna use that on eth0 and block ports and run apf rules on that...

Modem plugs into LAN port

Then fibre to the switch?

What you guys think???

Mick

That would work for me

 

[Mick]

That would work for me

@oneman @jfish @Him Her

Any suggestions on a fibre card???

Never used fibre before!

Cheers

 

[oneman]

@oneman @jfish @Him Her

Any suggestions on a fibre card???

Never used fibre before!

Cheers

TBH, we don't use fibre for ethernet, only for SAN at work so don't have much experience in them.

 

[Him Her]

Be good if you could get an HP fibre card at a reasonable price - single targets are easier to shoot if there's an issue