OT - Small DNS "appliances" for remote offices.

Thu Feb 19 19:51:14 UTC 2015

older apple tv will work as well :)

Colin

> On 19 Feb 2015, at 19:47, Mel Beckman <mel at beckman.org> wrote:
> 
> If your time is worth anything, you can't beat the Mac Mini, especially for a branch office mission-critical application like DNS.
> 
> I just picked up a Mini from BestBuy for $480. I plugged it in, applied the latest updates, purchased the MacOSX Server component from the Apples Store ($19), and then via the Server control panel enabled DNS with forwarding.
> 
> Total time from unboxing to working DNS: 20 minutes.
> 
> The Server component smartly ships with all services disabled, in contrast to a lot of Linux distros, so it's pretty secure out of the box. You can harden it a bit more with the built-in PF firewall. The machine is also IPv6 ready out of the box, so my new DNS server automatically services both IPv4 and IPv6 clients.
> 
> You get Apple's warranty and full support. Any Apple store can do testing and repair.
> 
> And with a dual-core 1.4GHz I5 and 4GB memory, it's going to handle loads of DNS requests.
> 
> Of course, if your time is worth little, spend a lot of time tweaking slow, unsupported, incomplete solutions.
> 
> -mel
> 
> On Feb 19, 2015, at 11:32 AM, Denys Fedoryshchenko <denys at visp.net.lb>
> wrote:
> 
>> On 2015-02-19 18:26, Valdis.Kletnieks at vt.edu wrote:
>>> On Thu, 19 Feb 2015 14:52:42 +0000, David Reader said:
>>>> I'm using several to connect sensors, actuators, and such to a private
>>>> network, which it's great for - but I'd think at least twice before deploying
>>>> one as a public-serving host in user-experience-critical role in a remote
>>>> location.
>>> I have a Pi that's found a purpose in life as a remote smokeping sensor and
>>> related network monitoring, a task it does quite nicely.
>>> Note that they just released the Pi 2, which goes from the original single-core
>>> ARM V6 to a quad-core ARM V7, and increases memory from 256M to1G. All at the
>>> same price point.  That may change the calculus. I admit not having gotten one
>>> in hand to play with yet.
>> Weird thing - it still has Ethernet over ugly USB 2.0
>> That kills any interest to run it for any serious networking applications.
>> 
>> ---
>> Best regards,
>> Denys
>