Supermicro C2558 OpenVPN performance

[m2g2tem 15]

I'm starting slowy to look at my pfSense router upgrade. I've seen that at least few community members are using Supermicro Atom C2558 based boards. Can You share Your experience, especially speeds and overall performance (pfSense ideally). What should I expect from those processors and boards in terms of AirVPN speeds (AES-256, no-compression)? Thanks for sharing Your experience.

 

regards

[onebarrell 3]

My experience is with the Supermicro A1SRi-2758F (Rangely) and the A1SRM-2758F (Avoton) motherboards. They are 8 core motherboards, whereas the motherboard that you reference is a 4 core. Otherwise, they are the same. I have one of each of the 2758 boards mentioned above. Both are running pfsense with airvpn. Once you get them to boot up, they will work fine for months up until the time you reboot them or the power goes out and they try to restart themselves. At the time of boot or reboot, these motherboards very often hangup at ACPI APIC TABLE < INTEL TIANO >. At that point I have to try to restart the box again and again and again. It may reboot after 1 to 5 tries. It is a pain in the ass. Also both motherboards are slow to boot when they do boot up without hanging. They take at least a couple of minutes to boot up.  Another thing I don’t like is that these boards don’t play the musical jingle after pfsense loads to let me know that it is up and running. I have to keep a monitor hooked up to make sure that it has not hungup during boot and know when it has completed the boot process.

 

As for performance of the Supermicro boards, I have cable internet that I can download at 66Mbs without going through a VPN. Using AirVPN with PFSense installed with either of the Supermicro boards, I can download at 62.5Mbs constantly for hours on end. CPU usage is between 5% and 14% at full speed downloading from usenet or torrents. My download speed on my old Dell P4 computers that I replaced with the Supermicro boards is EXACTLY THE SAME. The CPU usage on the old Dells is 35% to 55% since there is no AES-NI instructions in the older P4 CPU. The Supermicro boards draw only about 20 watts of power compared to the old Dells that draw 80 watts.

 

The Rangley board had a NIC to die before I had it a year. I RMA the board to Supermicro for repair or replacement. They send the board back unrepaired with a letter saying that they tested the board and can’t find any problem. The board was returned to me with the dead NIC. NIC (IGB0) is DEAD and the technician at the Supermicro repair facility is too incompetent to properly test it and determine that there is a problem. I paid over $340.00US for the board and Supermicro won’t fix it within the first year while it is under warranty. I had to purchase a 4 port Intel NIC to use in the PCI-e slot to continue using the board since I needed to utilize 4 NIC ports with my setup.  I will never buy another Supermicro product because of the way I was screwed with this issue.

 

I decided to initially purchase these Supermicro boards, because of the power savings everyone was raving about. In retrospect, and after doing some calculations, I have determined that it will take (ME) over 7 years to save in electricity what the outlay of cash was to build each system. (I live in an area where electricity is relatively cheap compared to other places) I was using a couple of old Dell P4 computers that I purchased for $40.00US each and put Intel 4 port Nics in them. The old Dells were both working fine, (perfectly as a matter of fact) before I purchased the Supermicro boards. They would boot up PFSense in less than 30 seconds and never hangup and play the little musical jungle after booting to let me know that it was up. If I could go back in time I would not purchase the Supermicro boards.  The old Dells were much more trouble free and inexpensive. I still have them to use as backups in the event a Supermicro takes a dump.

 

Unless you have an internet connection well above 100Mbs, or you live in an area where electricity prices are exorbitant, I recommend purchasing an old Dell or HP P4 from a flea market, pawn shop, Goodwill, or Ebay for less than $50.00US, add some NICs, install PFSense and enjoy all the speed that AirVPN and PFSense has to offer.

[m2g2tem 15]

Wow. Thank You for sharing Your experience, even though - I guess - You are little bit disappointed !

 

My experience is with the Supermicro A1SRi-2758F (Rangely) and the A1SRM-2758F (Avoton) motherboards. They are 8 core motherboards, whereas the motherboard that you reference is a 4 core. Otherwise, they are the same. I have one of each of the 2758 boards mentioned above. Both are running pfsense with airvpn. Once you get them to boot up, they will work fine for months up until the time you reboot them or the power goes out and they try to restart themselves. At the time of boot or reboot, these motherboards very often hangup at ACPI APIC TABLE < INTEL TIANO >. At that point I have to try to restart the box again and again and again. It may reboot after 1 to 5 tries. It is a pain in the ass. Also both motherboards are slow to boot when they do boot up without hanging. They take at least a couple of minutes to boot up.  Another thing I don’t like is that these boards don’t play the musical jingle after pfsense loads to let me know that it is up and running. I have to keep a monitor hooked up to make sure that it has not hungup during boot and know when it has completed the boot process.

 

Wow. That's very unfortunate, almost disqualifying IMHO. I travel a lot and I need something that just works. I don't expect my wife connecting the bloody thing to the physical monitor and reading me boot log every time router reboots . This is very strange as a lot of original pfSense (netgate) equipment, officially available on their online store, are based on those boards and chipsets. Started looking and pfSense forums and indeed users are reporting long booting times. This is indeed strange. Do You have recent pfSense builds, just asking? And the jingle thing. Also disqualifying

 

Strange that this board is so recommended on pfSense forums then.

 

As for performance of the Supermicro boards, I have cable internet that I can download at 66Mbs without going through a VPN. Using AirVPN with PFSense installed with either of the Supermicro boards, I can download at 62.5Mbs constantly for hours on end. CPU usage is between 5% and 14% at full speed downloading from usenet or torrents. My download speed on my old Dell P4 computers that I replaced with the Supermicro boards is EXACTLY THE SAME. The CPU usage on the old Dells is 35% to 55% since there is no AES-NI instructions in the older P4 CPU. The Supermicro boards draw only about 20 watts of power compared to the old Dells that draw 80 watts.

[...]

Unless you have an internet connection well above 100Mbs, or you live in an area where electricity prices are exorbitant, I recommend purchasing an old Dell or HP P4 from a flea market, pawn shop, Goodwill, or Ebay for less than $50.00US, add some NICs, install PFSense and enjoy all the speed that AirVPN and PFSense has to offer.

 

Yes I have fiber 300Mbit connection and looking for something with passive cooling which can saturate my connection.

[framura 0]

Hi,

 

I am using from 6 months A1SRi-2758F without any problems.

 

I use OPNSense (PFsense's fork) inside a VMWare virtual Machine (ESXI 6) and it works very good: I have a 500mbit connection and I get line's saturation without VPN (30% CPU of 6 cores) or 300Mbps with VPN (3 simultaneous connections).

[Wolf666 17]

I use a A1SRi-2558F with 8 GB of ECC RAM and 80GB SSD (intel data center Series) and pfSense without any issue since almost 18 months. When OpenVPN 2.4 will be definitely released (now in alpha 2) and AirVPN will use AES-GCM we will have the benefits of AES-NI hardaware support.

These boards are recommended for pfSense because they are server grade boards with minimum energy consumption.

 

My experience is pretty good and I recommend these boards.

[Casper31 73]

 

I use a A1SRi-2558F with 8 GB of ECC RAM and 80GB SSD (intel data center Series) and pfSense without any issue since almost 18 months. When OpenVPN 2.4 will be definitely released (now in alpha 2) and AirVPN will use AES-GCM we will have the benefits of AES-NI hardaware support.

These boards are recommended for pfSense because they are server grade boards with minimum energy consumption.

 

My experience is pretty good and I recommend these boards.

 

My experience is pretty good and I recommend these boards.

 

I agree these atom boards are great in combination with pfsense.

But did you know that you can take out 4 or even 6 cores in the bios.

Of course this depends of the programs you use and number of clients etc.But it can reduce energy consumption and noise.

I think its worth while to consider or try it out .

 

Gr,Casper

[Blade Runner 4]

I bought an A1SRi-2758F, similar to O, because of good reviews on pfSense forum. No dead NIC however I'm less than thrilled with its performance. IMO it's a driver issue with igb0 that has not been resolved by either FreeBSD or pfSense groups. My initial pfSense motherboard was Supermicro X8SIA-F. No issues installing pfSense and configuring PIA. I used a Supermicro X10SLL-S as an intermediate solution. I noticed pfSense issues with igb0 configured as WAN with X10SLL. The X10SLL has em0 and igb0 NIC. It was trial and error and more error until em0 and igb0 were configured as WAN and LAN, respectively.

 

I thought the C2758F would be the solution. WRONG. It's negatives are not enough to overcome its positives.