Hi all. I'm in the process of planning an upgrade to our office firewall, and am happy that I get to use OpenBSD -current. :-)
The hardware I'm considering is a Dell PowerEdge 850 server with four GbE NICs (two built-in and two on an expansion card) We have 25 people on a private IP subnet NATed to a handful of public IPs We'll be using a high-speed cable modem connection - 50 Mbps down/10Mbps up - as our primary Internet link, with a slower aDSL link as a backup. In addition to the PF firewall I want to use the box as an (bridged) OpenVPN endpoint for 3-5 folks. ----- So I was hoping to learn if others on the list are using a PowerEdge 850 for this type of firewalling scenario, and to hear any anecdotes about the 850s in such a dual application. Specifically I'm wondering about the Pentium D CPU on the 850. I know an MP Kernel won't help with PF (and may actually hinder things), but perhaps an MP Kernel might help with a PF and OpenVPN combination? Maybe I should run a Generic, rather than Generic-MP, kernel even though the chip is dual core? If you are happy with your PowerEdge 850 firewall, perhaps you'd be willing to share your hardware configuration? or perhaps there is another hardware configuration I should consider? (I'll be buying the box on eBay or Craigslist, and have a slight personal bias toward Dell servers) Thanks in advance for any input, advise or opinions. Best regards, :-) Sarah -- "Control your own destiny, or someone else will" - Jack Welsh
