Re: Low power machine

On Wed, Nov 19, 2014 at 6:05 PM, Dustin Marquess <dmarquess%gmail.com@localhost> wrote:

Sorry if this is slightly OT.

I'm looking for recommendations for an enclosed, stable low power draw
machine that is NetBSD-friendly to install in a remote location for
two purposes:

- A single nailed-up OpenVPN tunnel
- A small unbound DNS resolver install

So far I've been looking at a Raspberry Pi Model B+ and a Beaglebone
Black, but I'm not sure of the status on those two exact models. I've
also been looking at the Intel NUCs, but those are in another class
when it comes to power draw.

Any other recommendations?

I think it really depends on what you mean by "install in a remote location".

I've been using the Seagate Dockstar with some success for a while now. I like them because they have multiple USB ports, fairly low power draw, and arm is pretty well supported by NetBSD. But only 128 megs of memory. Hasn't been an issue so far.

You do have to do some firmware hacks to make it boot NetBSD though. Not very friendly for a remote setup, but you could easily set it up locally and mail it to wherever it goes. Connecting a console is not trivial either, but if you could get one on it at the remote location it would be simple to support.

The Pi will boot from an SD card with no issue, so long as someone local can write an image to the card. You could edit the image and put whatever you want in there to get it to boot, and then finish the deployment from there. Most similar machines should be the same.

I'm deploying another Dockstar right now.

Andy