What hardware do you use for Dansguardian / Censornet?

[pete]

I'm replacing our aging proxy server / mailserver / ex-dc (1) with a mailserver and proxy each on separate hardware. Current proxy (SWS) doesn't cache and isn't as flexible as I'd like - it does have AV filtering though.

 

After reading up on squid and dansguardian I'm undecided as to production hardware. The kit I choose should be able to comfortably cache, filter and AV-scan a 2 meg line for up to 300 concurrent users, who'll be mostly just grabbing html and images.

 

I'm considering either a "proper" server of some description or a couple of load-balanced "workstation" spec machines. Rackmountability is a definite bonus since my server room (half of a once-wider corridor) is getting cramped.

 

What spec kit are people running?

And for how many (theoretical) maximum users?

Is is holding up ok?

What mistakes did you make that I can avoid?

How did you load-test the proxy before it went live? <-- the old proxy will be used until the new one is judged stable / correctly configured.

 

Cheers

 

(1) embc box, not my decision.

[Geoff]

After reading up on squid and dansguardian I'm undecided as to production hardware. The kit I choose should be able to comfortably cache, filter and AV-scan a 2 meg line for up to 300 concurrent users, who'll be mostly just grabbing html and images.

 

Low end P4 or Athlon system is fine. You'll need a decent amount of ram though. 512mb should work.

 

If you've got an old Dual Processor P3 system kicking about spare, that'd do just as well.

[pete]

If you've got an old Dual Processor P3 system kicking about spare, that'd do just as well.

 

Annoyingly enough I do, but it's the old box that's being replaced / possibly kept on just as a mailserver. (I don't fancy replacing email + proxy at the same time).

 

I know squid isn't multi-threaded (or wasn't last time I looked), so is there significant benefit to dual processors - one processor doing squid-specific stuff and the other handling the mundane stuff?

[plexer]

One of the HP DL140's that's currently on offer with a £250 rebate? 2GB of RAM etc...

 

Ben

[ICTNUT]

We have been using an old AMD 2000+ with 512MB and 60GB drive, 1 x 100Mb NIC (INTEL) and 1 x 1000MB NIC (INTEL)

 

Software Installed:

Smoothwall

Dans Gaurdian

ClamAV

DSpam

 

Average User Load: 750 Users

 

Has not fallen over yet however I have a job setup to reboot the box and clear the cache each Sunday so that helps abit too.

[ChrisH]

Im using a workstation with 512 meg ram. Will be moving onto an old Dell P4 2 gig with 512 meg ram soon as it's a smaller form factor and will fit on shelf in my rack

[plexer]

I'm getting one of those DL140's with an extra 2gb ram installed, looks like I may be better off sticking the extra 2gb in my it support web server

 

Ben

[ChrisH]

Just so you know I think Censornet will only use a certain amount of memory (1 gig I think). You will have to alter something somewhere. You wont get anywhere near using 2 gig usage anyways.

 

Oh and it looks like you will have trouble with the network card drivers on that model see here

 

Building a Vanilla Squid/DG box will be fine but ofc you wont have some of the nice features of censornet but you can easily set up transparent auth easy enough of your home built one.

[plexer]

Thats ok I'll just take the extra 2 gig out and put in my other webserver then saves me buying the extra gig I was going to buy for that.

 

That censornet post is quite old though from last year so with the latest release it may work from the off will see when I get the machine.

 

Ben

[Geoff]

I know squid isn't multi-threaded (or wasn't last time I looked), so is there significant benefit to dual processors - one processor doing squid-specific stuff and the other handling the mundane stuff?

 

Well each squid process is single threaded. However there's nothing to stop you running multiple squid processes. Linux will balance these out between however many processes you have.

 

Dansguardian and Clam AV work the same way.

[CyberNerd]

Check out the smoothwall hardware requirement calculator:

 

http://www.smoothwall.net/cgi-bin/i5specificationcalc

[john]

I use a Biostar 220M SFF PC with a Allied Telesyn 100MB PCI NIC on it as well as the on-board 100M. Its got a 40GB hard drive and 512MB ram, and 2.8ghz Celeron in it, total cost was just under £200 for it, serving 30 users, may seem overkill, but would have cost me more to fix up an old P3 machine, and also it fits in the small space next to my server.

[pete]

I use a Biostar 220M SFF PC with a Allied Telesyn 100MB PCI NIC on it as well as the on-board 100M. Its got a 40GB hard drive and 512MB ram, and 2.8ghz Celeron in it, total cost was just under £200 for it, serving 30 users, may seem overkill, but would have cost me more to fix up an old P3 machine, and also it fits in the small space next to my server.

 

I knew I'd seen a photo of that from someone on here.

 

Would anyone mind sharing load statistics from their setups? i.e hardware, cache size, disk setup (I was thinking of mirroring the system disk and leaving any others as individual cache disks) and peak load.

 

@cybernerd

Just, had a look at that - it seems skewed based upon what I've read in other places, so I'm not sure if something smoothwall-specific (or paid version specific) is throwing it off.

 

My rough spec is 3Ghz processor, 2-3GB ram, mirrored system disk and then any other disks left as cache drives. I'm currently wondering if I'd get any noticeable (based upon number of users) performance benefit from SCSI disks.

[openhgs]

We use Bloxx from http://www.packetdynamics.com . The actual hardware spec of ours is Intel Pentium 4 CPU 3.00GHz, 5506788 kB memory, 120GB disk, Red Hat Linux 8.0 3.2-7 (kernel version 2.4.29). Great product too; the pupils just love the Bloxx box

[MkII]

Check out the smoothwall hardware requirement calculator:

 

http://www.smoothwall.net/cgi-bin/i5specificationcalc

 

Thanks for that. Our LA are trying to run this on a low spec server ...result = 82 very unhappy schools.

 

Original server:- Dual 2.4ghz CPU, 1GB RAM. Guardian only seems to recognise 1 CPU on it tho'.

 

Moved it to VMWare, gave it 2 x 3ghz CPU, 2GB of Ram. - Still not very good....

[webman]

Bloxx?? Which bank did you rob to be able to pay for that? 8)

[linuxgirlie]

I bought a new server, so click that, but technically as we built it and it was built from computer parts and not server parts, maybe I should of selected workstation.

 

Our does 700 students and 50 staff, and its a 2.4ghz AMD, with 2 gb RAM. So nothing special and it does the job, its been going for 3 years now and we have never had a problem with it.

 

This runs our proxy server, which includes, dansguardian, squid, asset/help centre and multimedia programs.

[Sylv3r]

We run Censornet on an old Workstation. As long as it has plenty RAM it seems work without any problems. This is for 1350 Users and 370 workstations.

[Busybub]

Compared to you lot, I need to move out of the Dark Ages... running a Celeron 600 over here with a mere 128mb of PC100!!!

 

Works adequately provided that the users are restricted to 256k speed limit in a class of 28max, otherwise at 512, this number of users simultaneously downloading videos will overload it.

 

Sounds pretty bad but I've not had any complaints since dumping Packet Dynamics 2 years ago! Surprisingly, speed isn't actually that much different for users.

[tom_newton]

@Mark - you need to select SMP in the "setup" (login as root, run setup if you want to do it after the fact) to use >1 processor.

 

How's the speed looking now - admittedly 80-odd schools is quite a bunch to go through one box, and its one of our largest UK installs (we've a few more big ones in the US).