I want to build a mini-ITX OPNsense router. Here are my requirements:
- The main OS is Proxmox (installed on the M.2) so that I can manage it as a node in a cluster
- OPNsense is installed on the SATA SSD and is configured so that it can run as a VM within Proxmox or by itself as the boot drive (in case the M.2 dies or something idk lol)
- A couple other network-based containers running on LXC containers within Proxmox (such as a redundant Pi-Hole in case I need to do maintenance on my other Pi-Hole VM on a different machine)
Is there anything you would do differently? This feels really expensive for a router (albeit a router that can do lots of cool shit).
The motherboard was chosen because it is the only mini-ITX board I can find with at a reasonable price point with dual-NICs, and I would have opted for a i3-7100T but the motherboard requires a BIOS update to support 7th gen Intel.
Also the whole PicoPSU thing rubs me the wrong way (looks like a fire waiting to happen), is it really the default solution for mini-ITX?
And finally, I will actually need to pick up a switch now that I’m not using my router’s LAN ports, so what are people’s thoughts on an SG200-18?
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If you are going the intel 35W cpu route, why don’t you just grab an m720q or m920q?
Way cheaper, way smaller, less power consumption.
If you really like tinkering, you can fit a dualport 10Gbe NIC, a 2.5Gbe port, two NVMEs and one SATA SSD into that tiny m920q. Combined with 64Gb of RAM.Grab a used one for cheap on ebay. Or a quad port Gigabit NIC instead the 10Gbe NIC.
I actually didn’t know there was a PCI slot on those guys…time to crawl through Ebay again. Thanks!
I’m curious about how you manage to get the VM to be also on boot if the m.2 drive dies? Seems like a smart way of doing it
It’s my understanding that you can just pass through a physical disk to a VM instead of using a virtual disk and that way you can just boot as a VM or from bare metal https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Passthrough_Physical_Disk_to_Virtual_Machine_(VM)
I just ordered an ASRock DeskMeet/Ryzen 5 4600G/32gb 3200Mhz DDR4 ($350 all together), for basically the same purpose. But I’m going to use a 512gb NVMe and a PCIE 10gb dual NIC I have on hand. (Hopefully the PCIE NIC actually works in that slot.)
I might try to move Frigate and/or Jellyfin to this device later with hardware accelerated encoding. I like having options.