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Ask Slashdot: Enterprise-Grade Linux Networking Hardware?
An anonymous reader writes "In spite of Linux's great networking capabilities, there seems to be a shortage of suitable hardware for building an enterprise-grade networking platform. I've had success on smaller projects with the Soekris offerings but they are suboptimal for large-scale deployment due to their single-board non-redundant design (eg., single power supply, lack of backup 'controller'). What is the closest thing to a modular Linux-capable platform with some level of hardware redundancy and substantial bus/backplane throughput?"
Try a Dell server.
Official Linux support - check
Redundant power supplies - check
Remote LAN console - check
Server-class motherboard with loads of bandwidth - check
Rack-mountable - check
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http://www.vyatta.com/solutions/physical/appliances
I've used Supermicro equipment for years. Their 1U Atom based systems work great for firewalls, routers, or any other kind of Linux network device. Low power, mostly fanless (power supply has a fan), expansion slots, decently priced. You can go up the line to full blown Xeon based systems with all the redundancy you need.
Their support is good also. You get to talk to knowledgeable people who speak English.
Supermicro website
Of course they haven't. Ask Slashdot is the place for incompetent IT monkeys to get told how to do the basic tasks of their job.
I have a friend who operates a small ISP in rural Iowa. I believe he's using ImageStream routers. Just a quick look at their lineup and I'm guessing that they can cover small to mid size businesses. They claim to be able to replace Cisco 3945 and 7206 routers. I'm not sure about hardware redundancy though.
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
ALIX boards can run Linux or FreeBSD (Monowall, pfSense) and support PoE, so you can set up your own redundant power system. For board redundancy, just use two routers.
Actually, the Soekris boards seem to be similar - they both use x86 CPUs.
Pretty most software devices I've seen have either been a rebadged Dell or Supermicro, with the top end running custom cases, and the low end doing whitebox.
In terms of "real" networking kit though, there is a bunch of switches that run linux:
Arista (everything)
Extreme (everything running XOS, which is all current models)
Cisco (everything running IOS XE, the only switch being the 4500-X)
All Juniper devices that run JunOS are FreeBSD, this includes both the EX and QFX switch lines, as well as their SRX firewalls.
Also most of the openflow-aimed switches run Linux, eg http://www.pica8.com/
/* FUCK - The F-word is here so that you can grep for it */
I run a 50/50 mix of Dell and HP Proliant servers. About 30 of each brand. All of these are fairly new, within a few years of age.
By far, the Dells do break down more often. The HPs seem to only lose hot-pluggable hard drives every now and then, but the Dells lose drives, PSUs, cooling fans, RAID controllers and even had a motherboard fail. However, the latest batch of Proliants I bought seem to not be built as good as in the past either. We'll see how well they hold up. It's all Foxconn junk nowadays. The new servers do perform very fast however, you do have to give them credit there.
...but I use Sun Microsystems hardware for this task.
The X2100, X4100 series servers more than meet my needs, and are available on the used market for a song these days.
The lights-out management works great, the rackmount kits and cable management arms are first-class, the hardware is well-made, and they look cool. Heck, they're even certified to run RHEL 5 or so.
Best of all - buying used Sun gear and putting Linux on it pisses off Larry Ellison. What more could you ask for?
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
So anytime someone posts an Ask Slashdot question, it means that they're idiots? Nice to know. The OP would have done well to have been clearer as to whether he was talking about servers or networking gear. But aside from that, if the OP is looking at sinking a whole ton of cash, which he'd have to in order to get all the things he listed, such as redundant power supplies, backup controllers and so on, he is doing the right thing by asking around people who have made high value purchases to find out which ones work w/ Linux, and which don't.
So if you had this job, all you'd do is visit the websites of the vendors in question and look @ their online product catalogs, where they are bound to list their shortcomings as well as their strengths? Good idea!
Ok first thing first, I work for ImageStream as the Technical Support manager. So I might have a slightly biased viewpoint when it comes to the place I have been working for the last 16 years... But we have been doing Linux Based networking for the last 14 years.
What the OP wants to do is rather difficult for a few reasons. First, after shipping thousands of Linux based routers I can tell you that redundant power supplies that fit into standard PC hardware have a much higher failure rate than a standard Power Supply. Granted, if you have a failure you still have a functional power supply(which is now working twice as hard and is even more likely to fail).
Second, standard PC hardware just doesn't support multiple redundant components. Sure you can get redundant power supplies, but redundant buses or Cpu's your talking different about a totally different class of hardware(see below).
Third, If you truly have an Enterprise application, and your asking about hardware to support your application you are already in over your head. Sorry it's just the truth. The OP is talking about building a custom solution for a mission critical application and they have to ask on slashdot about hardware solutions. What happens when(not if) the OP has a problem. The real reason that many people buy our(ImageStream's) hardware is for the support. If something doesn't work they don't have try and troubleshoot a strange Pci bus condition or an obscure Linux Kernel issue that you only see when you have +5,000 networking interfaces in a system. It's one thing if your a Google and you want to build something that just doesn't exist like the OpenFlow switches they are using in their Gscale network. But for a normal organization you are going to spend money and time to develop your custom solution and in the end if anything doesn't work, you will spend more time fixing it.
Now if the OP still wants to do this... I would look at an ATCA (AdvancedTCA ) chassis. You can get support for a redundant dual loop back plane, multiple CPU cards, redundant power supplies and in most cases a out of band management module for the chassis. But this is VERY costly hardware. If your not budgeting at least $20k in hardware your likely not going to end-up with anything that had real redundancy.
Here is something different to all the other experts.
It is absolutely useless to have redundant hardware, eg: Dual PSUs, Dual CPUs, Dual Motherboards, etc. on the same computer. You will never be able to 100% protect against a hardware failure as they will invariably share hardware to allow the interconnection between the redundant components to occur, it is unlikely to protect from things like a short circuit/power surge which would take out everything until the UPS. Then if a component does fail, to repair it your are going to have to take it offline to restore that redundancy anyway.
You are far better off getting two (or more) completely separate servers, geographically diverse if possible, which uses software to provide redundancy. If one goes down, the other(s) would be powerful enough to handle all the load, and when everything is rosey, it just load balances.
The real world difference is you are looking at a $5000 server with identical specs as a $20,000 but without all the redundant PSUs, etc. but you would be better off buying two $5,000 servers ($10,000 total), set them up to have redundancy of each other (So you truely have two COMPLETELY separate sets in redundant hardware of all components, and geographically separate too if possible), and as a bonus you have twice as much computing power (or scale down power draw when not needed) for when both servers are working. If you need to pull one down for maintenance, you don't need to shut off the whole thing.
If you are into Dual PSUs, etc. equipment in addition to also load balancing/fallover between other servers which also have redundancy, this is pointless because you should have ability to cope with the complete failure of a "redundant" server anyway, for the time it takes to replace the defective part the window that the other server(s) will have a failure in that time is not very high.
The only exception to this is Hard Drives, Hard Drives make sense for redundancy, not just because of their high rate of failure, but the fact that if there is a failure, it is a lot more work to recover from (Whereas other components are just a straight hardware swap) so it is saving extra work in the long run.
For a smaller environment where a small amount of downtime would be acceptable, You can even have a Cold Server, an exactly clone of the Main Server ready to go with all the software setup but powered off until needed if there is fault with the main server, the Cold Server can then be powered on to take over. There is no redundancy or fall over with this, but then again, in a smaller environment, your app might not support any kind of redundancy. With a Cold Server, just turn off the faulty server, switch on the cold server, restore the latest data set, and off you go. Microsoft doesn't require that Cold Servers hold a separate license either.
Go with the cheap router and buy TWO or more.
Deploy using VRRP or other active/standby or active/active configuration.