DIY pfSense Rackmount Router Build Log - Part 3: Third Time's the Charm?
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2016-05-06
·
2,127 words · ~10 min read
0:02
okay through good times and bad times
0:05
through sickness and in health something something we make videos every day and
0:11
sometimes when our teleprompter mysteriously goes missing we make a
0:15
different video than we were planning on doing today so while I was going to
0:20
review the Rog Swift pg279 Q instead I
0:23
am taking yet another shot yes my
0:27
friends yet another shot at building my own pfSense router this time with a
0:33
chassis that a isn't one you because that was way more of a nightmare than it
0:37
was worth and B actually is the correct
0:41
width for a server rack it is apparently a known design flaw with the oneu
0:46
chassis that we used before that if you put the lid on it which we used to
0:50
create like that cool ducting cooling system for the CPU heat sink it is well
0:55
known that it then does not fit in a rack which would raise the question
1:00
what is the point of a rack mount chassis that doesn't fit in a rack when
1:03
you close the top of it so after all that after all the dead boards we're
1:08
blowing it up we're starting again from scratch here we
1:18
go the master case 5 from Cooler Master lets you truly make your midtower PC
1:23
case your own with a variety of modular parts and accessories check out the link
1:27
in the video description to learn more the this computer is going to go
1:31
together just like that there will be no problems no
1:36
problems all right so let's do a rundown of the new hardware so for our chassis
1:42
we went with an iar USA D200
1:45
LS the reason I chose this is for a couple of reasons number one I think it
1:50
looks super cool with like these blue
1:53
things on the front number two we didn't need a ton of drive space because it's a
1:59
router so we didn't need anything with like you know front hot swap rails or
2:04
anything like that um and number three I
2:07
wanted something that was able to mount our expansion cards rotated 90° so that
2:12
we could use full height expansion cards if we wanted to even in a 2u chassis so
2:19
just like last time we've gone with a redundant power supply this time it's a
2:23
different size obviously to go with the chassis that we have so this is a 500
2:27
watt redundant power supply meaning that either of these two power supply units
2:33
could fail outright and we'd be able to slide it out keeping the system
2:36
operating and put a new replacement unit in this is pretty important for any kind
2:41
of mission critical machine something like a router where the entire company
2:46
literally shuts down if it's not working for you know 10 minutes and I mounted it
2:51
upside
2:56
down a I do these things to myself
3:06
Ed ah yeah
3:10
good on the subject of reliability we opted for Server grade Hardware this
3:15
time across the board so we've got a p9d
3:18
e4l motherboard from isus the reason
3:22
this one was chosen was we could have gone with an matx board quite easily but
3:27
our chassis has room for an ATX this gives me the flex ability to do
3:30
something else with the board in the future if I so desire and the main
3:34
reason right there four Intel gigabit
3:37
NYX built in that'll give us a total with our two expansion cards so one of
3:41
which is an i340 T4 so that'll give us a
3:45
total of 8 gabit RJ45 ports then we
3:50
actually have another card here so this is an i350 based SFP card so this is
3:55
also a gigabit four port card but this one we're going to be using for the link
4:00
from our modem essentially like our fiber modem so that'll give us a total
4:05
of 12 ports using those two expansion slots at the back for our CPU we've gone
4:11
with a low power Zeon it's a 1265
4:14
lv3 and then for our boot drive we are going to be using an old SSD that I had
4:19
lying around it beats a thumb drive but it won't matter anyway because I'm
4:22
looking at running the embedded version of pfSense so we're not going to have to
4:26
worry about a bunch of wres on the disc either way for RAM we're going to go
4:30
grab some Kingston ECC RAM off the shelf and throw that
4:34
in all right so the machine is built it
4:37
was a tight fit with that PCI Express
4:41
ribbon cable and that bottom network card that is it is still unclear to me
4:46
if all of this Biz in here is is definitely going to work but one way or
4:52
the other it is time to find out if this system
4:56
posts so come along with me for a little journey
5:02
okay power's on that's a good sign
5:06
hey oh the monitor's not on that won't help what is this monitor doing get in
5:12
there come on
5:15
baby yes okay so the machine is built the
5:19
machine is posted we're in the BIOS it's working now seems like a good time to
5:24
address the comment that I'm sure many of you have already left under the video
5:29
yes I know this is an Overkill machine I
5:32
get it it's way overpowered for a router the reality of it is the manufacturer
5:36
sent us this stuff the only piece that I provided was actually the low power Zeon
5:40
CPU so do I have a badass router the
5:43
answer is yes do you watch Linus Tech tips for like just good enough the
5:48
answer is maybe but either way we're going overkill on this one so now we're
5:52
going to get into how to actually install pfSense on your machine so you
5:58
head over to the pfSense website you download whichever is the appropriate
6:02
version for what you're doing so in this case we really could go with either the
6:05
embedded or the full install um with the full install being more heavy-handed on
6:12
our SSD especially if we enable things like logging for example then once you
6:17
go through the pretty straightforward setup process that we're going to show
6:21
kind of quick on screen here you are landed at a prompt that shows you the IP
6:25
through which your router can now be accessed on your local network from this
6:30
point on you pretty much never have a reason to look at the display output
6:35
from your router box ever again because everything will be managed through the
6:40
web UI all right so now that we've mostly
6:43
got things sorted out we've decided we're just going to go for gold we're
6:46
going to rip our Cisco router out we're going to put our pfSense router right
6:50
back in and we're going to finish the configuration wizard with that all
6:58
happening garbage can router does it smell vaguely of burning
7:03
in here to you H does it smell like burning yeah everything seems to be
7:10
working all
7:13
right I'm just throwing this up on the top for now and then once we've
7:17
determined that it functions then we'll put it then we'll
7:22
put it into uh this spot in the rack so
7:25
uh let's get some power run up here and then let's see if everyone is ready to
7:31
go so there will be a network outage oh
7:35
for hopefully about 15 to 20 minutes
7:39
okay okay this always makes me so nervous when inter server that is
7:45
everything it'll probably take me 20 minutes to walk to my desk with this
7:48
coffee don't put that camera on me it's making me
7:53
nervous here we go so I have informed
7:57
everyone the Network's going down
8:00
Let's uh let's boot up the PX tense box
8:03
and hope for the
8:07
best Y what the heck how did I end up
8:11
with two keyboards plugged in okay it's working now I
8:16
think sometimes it's hard to be
8:19
me okay do you want to set up V lens right now no enter aan interface or a
8:25
for auto detection here it goes no link up detected
8:30
let's try one of the other ones yeah but there's no link
8:35
up okay well I'm calling the
8:38
tech okay I think it's yeah it's number
8:41
two oh it's definitely not in my server
8:45
room so I have an mrv in my server room
8:50
would it help if I just sent you a picture of what I'm looking
8:55
at I'm at the main menu um
9:06
so here it is guys our Overkill router
9:10
is finally working there were a number
9:13
of issues it seems mostly related to our
9:17
uh fiber media that were causing ports
9:21
to not show that the link was up or show that it was when it wasn't when actually
9:26
the setup process for this is as simple as is you sit there at the console you
9:32
type in the interface that corresponds
9:35
to your internet connection the interface that corresponds to the switch
9:38
that goes out to the rest of your internal Network and you can tell everything else okay full auto I'm ready
9:43
to rock you put in an IP address which it just lists on the console you get
9:47
into here there's a wizard should be pretty much good to go we had some
9:51
issues don't worry too much about that basically the reason we're running
9:54
pfSense is we want a nice high performance router we want something
9:58
that has a Goole so you can actually get in here and you can configure all kinds of different
10:03
firewall stuff uh all kinds of different port forwarding uh you can actually set
10:08
up some really cool features like what I was using back at our old office when I
10:12
was trying to figure out who the heck was using up all the freaking bandwidth
10:16
cap uh so you can actually get cool little plugins that'll do things like
10:19
monitor um which IP addresses are sucking up all the bandwidth just a a a
10:25
great little piece of Kit and uh I'm sorry it's taken us so long to to get it
10:29
set up but that's in a nutshell why we went with pfSense for this box finally
10:35
finally finally managing to actually install
10:39
it so we've actually got a giveaway to announce for you guys no it's not a
10:44
router it's actually a little bit cooler this is the Zotac Magnus en
10:48
970 and while it unfortunately doesn't have a gtx970 graphics card in it it is
10:54
still pretty darn impressive with a core i5 5200u dual core hyperthreaded
10:58
processor two slots for 2 and 1/2 in tries one m.2 slot as well as up to 16
11:06
gigs of DDR3 L memory support now the graphics card that it is using is a GTX
11:12
960 and all of this is packed into a super tight little device so guys sign
11:19
up for the giveaway at the link in the video description and the full details
11:22
can be found there but the usual things apply so one entry per person it is a
11:26
worldwide giveaway with no restrictions and thanks to Zotac for sponsoring this
11:32
sweet giveaway make sure to let them know you're happy in the comments
11:36
below below below I need to drink of
11:42
water we're good so thanks for watching guys if you
11:46
like this video click that like button if you disliked it though click dislike
11:50
we can take it we can take the hate leave a comment if you have feelings
11:54
that are more complicated than that if you did like the video get subscribed
11:58
though maybe even consider consider supporting us we're buying a cool T oh I'm wearing a
12:02
well well okay that one might not ever be available again it was limited anyway
12:06
buying a cool shirt like uh the ones that we make uh changing Amazon bookmark
12:09
one with our affiliate code instructions for how to do that are up there or even
12:13
just supporting us directly through our community Forum I think that pretty much wraps it up I will see you guys next
12:18
time when I'm hopefully feeling a lot
12:22
better