SUPERMICRO SYS-5015A-H 1U Barebone Server Intel 945GC Intel Atom 330 Dual-Core 1.6GHz processor 533MHz FSB

Cheap Firewall

Reviewed By: bretticus on 11/16/2009

Tech Level: somewhat high - Ownership: 1 week to 1 month

Pros: Cheap! Small and quiet. 1U. Was able to stick this opposite another 1U switch in the rack. Two devices on 1U. Installed pfsense 1.2.2 to use as a firewall, dhcp, vpn box.

Cons: No vga/usb on front but hardly a requirement for a server under $300.

Other Thoughts: This box will temporarily be the edge device for several hundred websites (some quite prominent) in a datacenter cutover. Due to financial constraints, was purchased to limp along a few days until remote hardware can be repurposed and shipped. However, I have put significant amounts of packets through this and so far it barely registers on the CPUs. Excited to see if perhaps this will stay in the rack (if so I'll buy another for redundancy.) If not, it will make an excellent branch office firewall.

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Reviewed By: on 9/20/2009

Tech Level: average - Ownership: 1 week to 1 month

This user purchased this item from Newegg

Pros: Works great. Incredibly useful for smaller businesses. Very quiet, fast (for what it is), and professional looking.

Cons: Well, the northbridge is old (Intel 945GC). Only fan on the mobo is on the Northbride. (Though it is still quiet)

Other Thoughts: I am using these as untangle boxes and they are working nicely. I have only used with a 3.5 hdd, so I can't comment on the optional 2.5 hdd cage. Also, I don't use the expansion slot (buyers may want to test everything fits before promising anything to anybody) There are a ton of fan headers on the mobo too, so if you need a lot of fans shoehorned into, you can.

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Surprising quality

Reviewed By: notladstyle on 3/26/2010

Tech Level: high - Ownership: 1 day to 1 week

This user purchased this item from Newegg

Pros: Excellent build quality.Purchased as an alternative to an ASA5510, definitely satisfied with it. Better performance and no VPN license restrictions.

Front display has 2xLAN, temp warning, power, and hdd LEDs.

WORKS with PFsense DOES NOT WORK with monowall 1.31 is OK because pfsense supports multiple CPUs where monowall doesn't. ended up running ubuntu server with

Motherboard has 4x SATA connectors but there's only room for one drive in the compact case. There is also 40pin IDE connector.

Firewall throughput 440mbps (disc drive in my test machines bottlenecked results)
IPsec VPN throughput 120mb/s

Kill-a-watt power reading at startup 55 watts, at idle 34 watts.

Motherboard runs pretty cool, there is only one small fan over the chipset and it is not loud at all.

Cons: The 3.5" hdd mounting screws are on the bottom of the case which arent flush mounted so they stick out and will scratch the top of whatever is rack mounted under it. I ended up using double sided tape inside the case but VERY low profile screws might work too.

the case has no horizontal blowers to pull air over the motherboard - an AC environment is recommended.

No room for optical drive, hardly a con but worth mentioning. The motherboard is compatible with USB DVD drive and also has a single 40pin IDE connector.

Other Thoughts: With the compact case, awesome build quality, low power consumption this is definitely worth $270

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Arrived Faulty

Reviewed By: on 6/7/2010

Tech Level: high - Ownership: 1 day to 1 week

This user purchased this item from Newegg

Pros: Other than the lockups, it performed as expected. Actually better than expected.

I set it up with full LUKS disk encryption, and even with that overhead, it still had plenty of spare capacity to handle everything my old server had to.

Cons: Motherboard is faulty. It experiences random lockups (at least a dozen in 24 hours). Once this happens only a hard-boot / reset will get it working again.

Other Thoughts: Hopefully Newegg's RMA process will be quick.

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lm-sensors (temp, fan monitor) support

Reviewed By: US-Austin on 6/7/2010

Tech Level: somewhat high - Ownership: 1 month to 1 year

This user purchased this item from Newegg

Pros: - works well as all-purpose home server (Karmic 9.10), 2GB DRAM, 1.5TB HDD
- quiet, low power consumption
- couldn't get lm-sensors (from apt-get) to work. however, compiling lm-sensors 3.1.2 with some changes to /etc/init.d/lm_sensors does the trick
- changes:
1. Comment out

# Source function library.
# -US- . /etc/init.d/functions

2. Add
echo_success() {
echo -n " Success! "
}

echo_failure() {
echo -n " Failed! "
}

Cons: - SuperMicro documentation is suspect

Other Thoughts: > sudo /usr/local/bin/sensors
w83627dhg-isa-0290
Adapter: ISA adapter
VCore: +1.17 V (min = +0.92 V, max = +1.48 V)
..snip..
fan4: 5818 RPM (min = 712 RPM, div = 8)
Sys Temp: +41.0°C (high = +75.0°C, hyst = +70.0°C) sensor = thermistor
CPU Temp: +42.5°C (high = +85.0°C, hyst = +83.0°C) sensor = diode
AUX Temp: +54.5°C (high = +80.0°C, hyst = +75.0°C) sensor = diode
..snip..

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CAN handle 4gig

Reviewed By: BLKMGK on 6/4/2010

Tech Level: high - Ownership: 1 day to 1 week

This user purchased this item from Newegg

Pros: Low power, Dual Gig NICs, X86 compatible, plenty of power, got it on sale. Can you say IDS\Firewall? Loading ClearOS on it - this box is perfect for this application

Cons: Not going to easily get multiple HDD in here nor an optical drive. Requires an adapter or VERY low rise cards if you want to add anything - not needed for me. VGA output so keep an old monitor around. USB in back only - just 2x ports. Has internal USB headers and bonus a USB socket on the board but it points straight up and there's little room.

Other Thoughts: Specs state 2Gig only - FALSE! This box can handle 4Gig, I learned this from a friend moments after ordering just 2Gig - D'oh! All in all this is a perfect IDS and firewall box and this CPU ought to handle a good bit of traffic with decent software.

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