3 years ago I was gifted an old Dell R200 1U blade server. I used it as an apartment file server for 2 years, but it's since been, ahem, replaced.
I'm thinking of making it into a dedicated router for my network, which would be future proofing for an eventual connection >300mb (which is as much as my Netgear R7000 is good for on DD-WRT). Also, this would free up the eth1 connection on the R7000, which would allow me to team up with eth0 and double the AP's bandwidth to the main gigabit switch. I didn't think I had any HDDs for it (what was in it was moved to the new server as OS and Backup drives), but as it turns out, I found 3 160GB 7200RPM drives in a box in my garage.
What I do know if I go forward with this:
Questions I have about this:
1. If I do this, my separate main and firewalled guest wifi networks would still be managed (and separated from each other) through the AP (the Netgear R7000), right? All the server would be offloading is DHCP, WINS, and all internet traffic, right? Or would I need to setup the firewall between wifi networks on the router and VLAN it through to the AP?
2. Just using the two onboard GLAN ports should be sufficient? Or will I want to put a LAN card in it and team two ports back to the switch?
For now I'm just going to get debian running on it... but if you're familar with this, some answers would be nice here.
I'm thinking of making it into a dedicated router for my network, which would be future proofing for an eventual connection >300mb (which is as much as my Netgear R7000 is good for on DD-WRT). Also, this would free up the eth1 connection on the R7000, which would allow me to team up with eth0 and double the AP's bandwidth to the main gigabit switch. I didn't think I had any HDDs for it (what was in it was moved to the new server as OS and Backup drives), but as it turns out, I found 3 160GB 7200RPM drives in a box in my garage.
What I do know if I go forward with this:
- OS: Debian. Whatever the latest stable version is (or I'll stick with Jessie, which is what the other server runs).
- The two HDDs will be a SW raid 1. Debian supposedly supports booting from a setup with all partions SW RAID'd (and with LVM too). No need for a HW controller since it's mostly going to be running from memory anyway.
- CPU and RAM: IIt has a single Xeon 3085 (dual core 3GHz, 1333Mhz FSB); it has 2GB DDR2 on a single module installed. It was originally a Ubuntu based Firewall (I won't say from where, it's classified), so if it was good enough for that, it should be enough to run as a home router, right? Edit- I'm an idiot... I have 8GB of ECC registered DDR2 floating around... I can probably use that in this.
Questions I have about this:
1. If I do this, my separate main and firewalled guest wifi networks would still be managed (and separated from each other) through the AP (the Netgear R7000), right? All the server would be offloading is DHCP, WINS, and all internet traffic, right? Or would I need to setup the firewall between wifi networks on the router and VLAN it through to the AP?
2. Just using the two onboard GLAN ports should be sufficient? Or will I want to put a LAN card in it and team two ports back to the switch?
For now I'm just going to get debian running on it... but if you're familar with this, some answers would be nice here.
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