Quote:
Originally Posted by Darin 
To run anti-virus on your gateway, you're going to need something like pfsense, untangle, endian, etc. Are you planning on running it under a VM on the same hardware as your WHS? You could technically do that, but there's a couple of downsides. Technically, it's not as secure. But more importantly (to me) is that every time you need to power down your server to add drives or do other maintenance, your house also loses internet. I think VMs are cool, but I just don't like the idea of my server and internet router all being dependent on the same hardware.
When I ran out of space for drives in my server, rather than buying a dedicated hard drive rack, I just bought another PC case. It was cheaper, and gave me space for another MB in case I wanted to go the software gateway route. When I switched from a SATA card with port expanders to a SAS card with an HP SAS expander, I needed some way to power the SAS expander in the remote case. It needs a PCIe slot to plug in to, even though it doesn't communicate over that bus. So I've added a cheap MB into that second case, I've loaded vsphere 5.0 onto it, and I've installed pfsense as a VM. That's as far as I've gotten... I've just been playing with it, I haven't fully configured it, or switched my actual internet connection over to it yet. But antivirus filtering at the gateway is something I wanted to, so I'm working towards it.
To run anti-virus on your gateway, you're going to need something like pfsense, untangle, endian, etc. Are you planning on running it under a VM on the same hardware as your WHS? You could technically do that, but there's a couple of downsides. Technically, it's not as secure. But more importantly (to me) is that every time you need to power down your server to add drives or do other maintenance, your house also loses internet. I think VMs are cool, but I just don't like the idea of my server and internet router all being dependent on the same hardware.
When I ran out of space for drives in my server, rather than buying a dedicated hard drive rack, I just bought another PC case. It was cheaper, and gave me space for another MB in case I wanted to go the software gateway route. When I switched from a SATA card with port expanders to a SAS card with an HP SAS expander, I needed some way to power the SAS expander in the remote case. It needs a PCIe slot to plug in to, even though it doesn't communicate over that bus. So I've added a cheap MB into that second case, I've loaded vsphere 5.0 onto it, and I've installed pfsense as a VM. That's as far as I've gotten... I've just been playing with it, I haven't fully configured it, or switched my actual internet connection over to it yet. But antivirus filtering at the gateway is something I wanted to, so I'm working towards it.
Yeah server maintenance would mean no router but not no internet. We have U-Verse so we have the POS 2Wire gateway that would be put in Modem only mode but can be returned to gateway duty in a pinch.
2Wire U-Verse-----Server/Router-----8 Port Gigabit Switch (Wired Connections)-----Buffalo Router in AP mode (Wireless N)-----Buffalo Router in AP mode (Wireless G)
I just figured doing it like this would save budget from buying another x86/64 board, case, memory and cpu. Software could be run from a flash drive obviously. A new server would leave a Dell GX-320 and a rebuild of the HTPC would leave motherboard, memory, cpu and even a choice of drives.
But older hardware uses more power... My 5000+ has thermal issues when doing anything intensive (encoding files). I could replace it with a $35 Sempron 145 and that would reduce power usage (45 TWP) especially at idle.
Still would need another case but I don't like dual booting into Linux when it doesn't support my WiFi card on my laptop. Even though I have a four port game adapter/bridge and could run a cable into it for internet, seems kind of silly.
Could put Linux (Mint 12) on the Dell...
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Opps - forgot about that in all the excitement of generally getting things working 
