Where do you run eBox on ?

[jsalamero]

Some of you often ask us which hardware is the best choice for running eBox, and we usually say if it runs Ubuntu Linux, then whatever fullfills your needs.

We would like to listen from you, which hardware did you choose for your scenario ?

For example, on eBox HQ we have a HP Proliant DL120 as firewall and router, vpn server, file and printer sharing.

Edited:
It's also interesting if you can share with us how many users you have behind your eBox.

Thanks!

[alvinquah]

Some of you often ask us which hardware is the best choice for running eBox, and we usually say if it runs Ubuntu Linux, then whatever fullfills your needs.

We would like to listen from you, which hardware did you choose for your scenario ?

For example, on eBox HQ we have a HP Proliant DL120 as firewall and router, vpn server, file and printer sharing.

I will start off first. We are the distributor for eBox Platform in Singapore for Asia market. What I have tested is in x86 server platform like what jsalamero has mentioned. But somehow I prefer to offer eBox in a network appliance instead much like Watchguard or Fortinet. Coming from a commercial perspective, this tends to offer a better value proposition to our potential customer. From the market survey that I have done locally, it seems that customer will more likely to spend more to purchase IT solution when they are labeled as "Network Appliance" rather than "server" because generally customer will associate hardware with Microsoft which will tend  to drive the price down when bundled together. Having said that, we are in the amist of deciding some network appliance hardware to acquire for testing with eBox before we decided to distribute it here locally.

Anyone of you have successfully installed it into a VIA C7 embedded processor? I am looking along this line of hardware but I am not sure what is the performance of it coupled with eBox? Thanks

Alvin Quah
Arca Singapore

[christian]

Well... not sure my input is relevant because I use it at home.
I've 5 users, 4 of them being quite intensive internet services consumers (my 3 boys are spending quite a lot of time playing games over internet, browsing etc...)

Being an IT architect for quite big company, I try to keep our network at home as safe as possible, therefore focusing more on security than performance.
My initial configuration was:

- internal server: "Tranquile PC NAS" with Intel Atom 330
- internat gateway: home build PC based on C7

At this time proxy was running on internal server, forwarding HTTP request to second layer proxy on internet gateway server for antivirus and "profiling".

Since, although we were not really suffering from performance issues, I decided to move from C7 to another Atom 330 based motherboard, no more internal proxy (everything internet gateway).

Performance is for sure better thanks to 2 CPU dual core architecture that permits to handle more processes in parallel.

This platform should be able to handle much more users altough I don't know how much it will be loaded at the end when mail relaying service will fit such design.

And I cannot really compare with what I did before because my previous design what "home made", with no integration like eBox does. This permitted to have light webmail (squirrelmail) and light HTTP server (Cherokee).

Footprint with eBox is bigger (on the other hand with more services), reason why I even don't imagine to use my "FitPC" (BTW nice small box) to run one ebox server dedicated to LDAP master.

As you may understand from above description, "green computing" is also part of the balance. All the infrastructure is running 24*7, thus the greener, the better. No need for powerful dual core server at home for such purpose.

Christian

[thomas]

I use 2 identical machines:
They are locally manufactured servers (by a company in Greece) based on:
- TYAN motherboard (Toledo i3210W/i3200R S5211)
- Intel processor ( Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Quad  CPU   Q8200  @ 2.33GHz)
- 4 x 1 GB RAM (800 MHz)
- 2 x 1 TB SATA hard disks (Western Digital), combined on RAID controller
- Adaptec  Raid controller  (2420SA)

The first machine is used as router, firewall, gateway, ntp server, dns server, dhcp server, vpn server, http proxy (with a big cache) and gateway server.
The second machine is used as file server, internal mail server, virus checker and jabber server.

I have almost 40 users on 25 locally installed machines. The 20 machines are running ubuntu and the other 5 windows xp.
The 2 machines are having very little cpu utilization (almost 5-10 %) and the memory is always to 10 -20%.
So they are much 'bigger' than my needs.

The router routes traffic of 6 sub-networks.
- Users pcs for file and application sharing
- Ip telephony (external server based on elastix), with almost 100 ip-phones, 30 analogues and 10 wi-fi phones
- Wireless network for guest and ip phones
- Internal network in the control room (backup server, monitor server)
- Ip Cameras network
- External network, with 3 ADSL lines and one wireless line

I think that the above describe the two ebox servers and the jobs they called to bring out.

[dragonslayr]

Only one production site so far. I cannot replace ipcop machines until pppoe is achieved.

2 - AMD Phenom 9650 Quad-Core 4 machines with 8gig ram in each.
3 - 500gig hard drives in each machine.
drive 1 - jaunty - kvm - libvirt - vms
drive 2 - samba data
drive 3 - ebox rdiff backup  (This is a spare backup, not my main backup solution)

Machine 1 runs ebox-office in a vm
Machine 2 runs ebox-mail in a vm

Machine 2 syncs data with machine one and vice-versa.

Either machine can bite the dust and they'll be back up  in 10 minutes with current data. vms can migrate to another host quickly using a backup copy.

Plan to migrate other existing servers to the "vservers" as time permits. I do not use lvm at this time as I don't know it, therefore I do not trust it.

[javi]

Machine 2 syncs data with machine one and vice-versa.

Do you mean you sync /home/samba and /var/vmail?

[dragonslayr]

Machine 2 syncs data with machine one and vice-versa.

Do you mean you sync /home/samba and /var/vmail?

That's close
/home  and /var/vmail

[hvilppola]

FYI: We've now added to the Wiki a brief description of the eBox Platform Hardware Requirements. We hope you'll find it useful!

[Saturn2888]

I have two eBox machines now

Gateway, Router, Firewall, VPN, Webserver, PDC, File Sharing, LDAP Slave
Dell Optiplex GX260
2GHz P4
1GB RAM
2xGigE
40GB IDE HDD

LDAP Master, File Sharing, BackupPC Server
Dell Optiplex GX620
3.4GHz P4HT
2GB RAM
1xGigE
3x250GB SATA HDDs in RAID1 for /boot and RAID5 for /
40GB SATA HDD as swap (haven't ever seen swap used yet)

FYI: We've now added to the Wiki a brief description of the eBox Platform Hardware Requirements. We hope you'll find it useful!

That seems a bit high for 1-50. I would say you could easily get by on 512MB RAM for 1-25, maybe even up to 50 with what my main eBox server is running. I'm wondering if your data is including mail and some other things. If eGroupware is installed, I have no clue about system reqs then since they'd be a lot higher especially for 50 people.

[Saturn2888]

What do you mean? eBox runs on Ubuntu server 8.04.4.

[Saturn2888]

Umm... What? Haha. I'm almost 100% sure this was lost-in-translation.

[flashbios]

My Ebox-server is a nice system with a nice mainboard with a Intel(R) Pentium(R) Dual CPU E2200 @ 2.20GHz cpu and 8GB internal memory.  1 SATA systemdisk of 500GB and 4x 1TB SATA drives which are in MIRROR (raid-1) for the data.  This is a bit overkill, but it's for extra safety ;-)

Works great !

[Marcus]

and 4x 1TB SATA drives which are in MIRROR (raid-1)

Ouch!

4 Disks RAID 1

Why not using RAID10 ?  It would be faster, much more space and it would still be very secure.

[cheesyking]

and 4x 1TB SATA drives which are in MIRROR (raid-1)

Ouch!

4 Disks RAID 1

Why not using RAID10 ?  It would be faster, much more space and it would still be very secure.

Just remember that if you use a stripped raid system then data recovery of a failed array is a lot harder / more expensive! Obviously by using mirroring you're hoping not to have an array fail but such things can happen

[Saturn2888]

And s/he said s/he's trying to be extra careful. RAID10 isn't very extra-careful.