Ok. Admittedly I'm too lazy to read all of that but to throw in my 2 cents this is what i built my pfSense on back in summer of 2012 and I have no regrets. Total cost was just under $200 like 2 and a half years ago. It has no moving parts, low wattage, and I've not had a single issue. Very little duct tape involved. Actually just some twist ties because the screw holes for the tiny mSATA card didnt line up with the holes on the adapter. ;-)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16856205006 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812186184 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820161493 <-- notice the 4,000,000 MTBF http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148195 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812400022 <-- not really necessary but I didn't know at the time if i'd end up doing an embedded install which would redirect console to the serial port or a regular install using the VGA. Of course this stuff is all no longer for sale but my point here is I went out of my way to get an mSATA chip designed for embedded systems with a very high MTBF as I built this little sucker to last 7-10 years if possible. 4GB is just big enough to do a full install and that's what I did. I did have an issue with the frame buffer (graphics) driver used during the install but this was remedied by pressing F-something (forgot the key but it tells you during install) repeatedly during the text install screens to force refresh the text. It was a very small price to pay since I haven't had to do it since. Recent versions of pfSense might even not have that issue. Also, I stole a tiny detachable PC speaker from an ancient desktop and connected to the mobo so I could hear the beeps on boot and shutdown. I absolutely love that speaker beep pfSense makes when it finishes booting. ;-) On Fri, Oct 31, 2014 at 1:31 PM, Jim Thompson <[email protected]> wrote: > > > On Oct 30, 2014, at 3:06 PM, Jeppe Øland <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > On Thu, Oct 30, 2014 at 8:33 AM, Jim Thompson <[email protected]> > wrote: > >>> On the other hand, I tend to distrust manufacturers that shipped > >>> completely unreliable drives without any thought. > >>> Kingston/OCZ/Crucial are all in this boat for me. > >> > >> I’m sure I’ve been burned at least as badly by these, and others, and I > >> still buy from them. > > > > What can you do? The speed increase from SSDs in a PC means its almost > > impossible to go back to an HDD. > > And in a firewall/appliance, the benefits from no moving parts/lower > > power/heat/noise is hard to ignore. > > > >>> As for Nano, I thought it mounted almost everything as RO and only > >>> changed settings to write down settings changes, and RRD databases etc > >>> on reboots? > >> > >> I think I’ve already responded to this. > >> > >> nano is a > 10 year old “solution” to the problems that existed at the > time. > >> http://markmail.org/message/rxe4xfpmdwva7q3e > >> > >> That doesn’t mean it’s a bad solution, but though it’s author is a > brilliant > >> individual, he obviously didn’t envision SSD in 2004. > > > > Are you saying the "nano" release only covers the boot-slices? > > See how the there are three partitions in the below? Observe the sizes > (“922257 sectors”) of the first two. > > $ file pfSense-2.1.5-RELEASE-1g-amd64-nanobsd-20140825-0744.img > pfSense-2.1.5-RELEASE-1g-amd64-nanobsd-20140825-0744.img: x86 boot sector; > partition 1: ID=0xa5, active, starthead 1, startsector 63, 922257 sectors; > partition 2: ID=0xa5, starthead 1, startsector 922383, 922257 sectors; > partition 3: ID=0xa5, starthead 0, startsector 1844640, 102816 sectors, > code offset 0x31 > > > I thought the nano/embedded versions also write less to the disk. > > I don't have a full install handy to check, but the nano install > > definitely mounts the drive RO, and all runtime stuff (/var, /tmp) is > > run out of RAM disks. > > Yes, and I am aware of the differences with the “nano” builds. > > CF devices don’t have the same type of sophisticated wear-leveling and > virtual block remapping that modern SSDs and eMMC devices have. > > Yes, I am saying that compression (which on a modern 64-bit Intel / AMD > CPU is way faster than disk I/O (yes, even to a SSD)) and making those > sectors available to the drive has > potentially far greater impact than the crippled nature of the > “nano/embedded” version. > > We’re not changing this for pfSense software version 2.2, but you can bet > $CURRENCY to $SNACK_FOOD that it’s being evaluated and tested for something > subsequent. > > > _______________________________________________ > List mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.pfsense.org/mailman/listinfo/list >
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