Supermicro SuperServer E302-9D Review: A Fanless 10G pfSense Powerhouse

Miscellaneous Aspects and Concluding Remarks

The Supermicro SuperServer E302-9D proved to be an interesting system in terms of developing targeted benchmarks. While processing relevant workloads on the machine, we opted to go with an out-of-the-box experience. Despite spending well over three months with the unit, we blelieve there are a lot more aspects that can be looked into - including, but not limited to, additional tuning of the driver settings, adoption of DPDK-capable software, and evaluation of capabilities such as traffic shaping, VLANs, VPN options, etc. offered by pfSense. The Intel Xeon D-2123IT also supports AVX512, and the native 64-byte registers are bound to offer some benefits for networking applications. In terms of performance - there are bound to be systems that deliver similar number of 10G ports while providing greater firewall packet-processing capabilities. However, they are definitely not going to be fanless or be available in a compact form-factor like the E302-9D. Therein lies the unique appeal of the system.

Evaluation Testbed for the Supermicro SuperServer E302-9D
(From L to R - the Compulab fitlet-XA10-LAN, the Supermicro SuperServer 5019D-4C-FN8TP, the Ubiquiti mFi mPower Pro, the Supermicro SuperServer SYS-5028D-TN4T, and the SuperServer E302-9D)

Dual-LAN motherboards are commonly used for putting firewall distributions like pfSense into production. With the advent of 5G and adoption of fixed wireless broadband, high-speed dual-WAN deployments are going to become more common in the future. Networking engineers, software developers, and home-lab enthusiasts can get a head-start on this using systems like the E302-9D.

Migrating server platforms to embedded desktop systems is attractive for many use-cases. We would like to see some innovation from board component vendors as well as Supermicro to lower the power consumption numbers - particularly when only the IPMI is active. Server OSs are rightly optimized for performance and not power consumption. Despite this context, it is surprising to see FreeBSD and associated drivers lag well behind Windows Server in optimizing the aspect based on the workload being processed.

The Supermicro SuperServer E302-9D is an interesting and unique product from the company's stable. Fanless systems for industrial and embedded applications (particularly those with server credentials such as remote management capability) traditionally cost an arm and a leg. In that context, the pricing of the system is relatively sane at $1100 for a barebones configuration.

The size of the system and its passively-cooled nature greatly widens the breadth of deployment scenarios that it can cover. Avoiding an external power brick would have been nice, but it is quite common for systems in this form-factor. Embedded applications require systems that bundle a number of functions to allow for reduction in BOM cost and installation volume when space is at a premium. Systems such as the E302-9D ensure that no separate switches are needed while being deployed for related functionality. The system's design enables it to operate well in harsh conditions commonly found in industrial automation and communication systems. In the latter domain, load and conformance testing applications can also utilize systems such as the E302-9D.

Customers in need of a traditional 1U rackmount offering with the same capabilities can go for the SuperServer 5019D-4C-FN8TP. It is priced much lower at $870, but the target market is quite different given its noise profile and form-factor. The fanless and rugged nature of the SuperServer E302-9D ensures that the $250-odd premium is quite reasonable for most home-lab and industrial automation use-cases.