r/homelab•
hammertonail

Dell 210ii vs Dell R410 pfSense/VPN mostly

Discussion

Thanks for looking.

I'm new on my home lab journey. We are building a new house, having a bunch of ethernet terminated in the basement and I figured for cleanliness and wow factor I'd have everything in a rack.

I bought an R710 that I'll run a few VM's on, but reading here I know I need a different physical server for pfSense and its built in VPN.

I've seen suggested here a few times that the Dell 210ii is a great pfSense box. But they seem to be few and far between. There are lots of R410's on my local market. I can buy a R410 for $50 barebones (no HDD/Memory/rails/bezel). Its local, so I can pick it up and not pay shipping. This seems like a great deal.

I did some reading here: https://www.reddit.com/r/homelab/wiki/dell

And it looks like the dual CPU is the only real difference. Does this impact anything I don't know about yet?

Also is there a comparison posted anywhere that details some of the other gotcha's related to these machines? I see you guys talk about power usage, and fan volume, and parts availability for these different machines and I'd love to know more as I work towards purchasing.

Posted Aug 25, 2017, 12:46 PM UTC

1024
Loading comments…