[Liverpool] Cheap x86 mini-pc with multiple nic's

[Sebastian Arcus]

On 14/02/21 21:37, junk email account wrote:
> Hi,
> While I've not got experience of these specific models, I do have some 
> experience along the lines of what you are trying to do.
> My set up was using a fairly low powered machine running multiple 
> services and devices - and the difficulty I had was effectively I was 
> being over demanding of what the hardware was capable of supporting. Yes 
> there can be additional heat dissipation and IRQ s can be prioritised 
> etc but even so each machine will have an upper limit of what it is able 
> to do.
> For example, I think I remember that in theory the specification of USB 
> means it is possible to daisy chain and cascade up to 127 devices from a 
> single port. Assuming it is possible to provide power to them, that 
> single port could then access 127 * 18Tb hard drives. Yes they might be 
> addressed by the machine but I'd hate to imagine how that machine would 
> cope in copying files from one hard drive to another!

Hi - and thank you for the reply. It is true that any machine has a 
limit - but I suppose it depends on what tasks it is supposed to 
perform. For about 5 years I ran an Atom mini-ITX board doing the above 
and more - including Dovecot and Exim for email and Asterisk for voip - 
and it has managed fine. The tasks I mentioned - iptables firewall, 
openvpn endpoint, routing, QoS with tc - all for just a few clients - 
they are all fairly undemanding. Even a router, with a much slower 
processor, can just about manage it. For my Atom server, the most 
demanding task was ClamAV scanning emails. It really needed a lot of ram 
to work properly - about 2GB, and just starting clamd could take close 
to 5 minutes. Still, it did manage even that. The machines above have 
even faster processors than my old Atom, so I would guess it should be 
fine in this respect.