Dell VEP/VMWare Edge/Velo Cloud SD-WAN/VeraCloud VEP1400/VEP1400-X firewall units

[upalachango]

As requested. A little update: I was able to get opnsense installed on the eMMC. That went without a hitch by following the documentation.

I then switched to proxmox, which I'm more familiar with. Proxmox does not allow installing on eMMC as a default option. You have to install in debug mode. I actually was not able to get this working though as going into the advanced install menu under the serial console seems to have a bug. It kicks you out to the normal install menu whenever you use the arrow keys. I didn't try resolving this and just installed on the SSD as I'm still very much in testing stages.

My biggest gripe so far is the fan noise, which PVE/linux looks like an easier path to managing than BSD/OPNsense. I may do a hardware mod as well with some arctics or noctuas but not really interested in investing much more time or resources into this side project at the moment. A few starting hiccups aside, nice little unit for homelab uses.

 

[JaY_III]

As requested. A little update: I was able to get opnsense installed on the eMMC. That went without a hitch by following the documentation.

I then switched to proxmox, which I'm more familiar with. Proxmox does not allow installing on eMMC as a default option. You have to install in debug mode. I actually was not able to get this working though as going into the advanced install menu under the serial console seems to have a bug. It kicks you out to the normal install menu whenever you use the arrow keys. I didn't try resolving this and just installed on the SSD as I'm still very much in testing stages.

My biggest gripe so far is the fan noise, which PVE/linux looks like an easier path to managing than BSD/OPNsense. I may do a hardware mod as well with some arctics or noctuas but not really interested in investing much more time or resources into this side project at the moment. A few starting hiccups aside, nice little unit for homelab uses.


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Just an FYI if you want to do the fan mod....
The unit ships with nice (but load) Deltas, and the common just swap them for Noctuas is not as straight forward as you would think.
The board seems to monitor the current draw of the fan and if not enough is being pulled it wont spin the fans at all.

My system would initially spin the noctuas up then after a short while they would turn off. You need to add a resistor in parallel to trick the fan controller..... As I thought that was a silly solution, what I ended up doing was soldering the 12V leads to the back side of the 12V input power on the board, pulling power directly from the PSU.

They hack works well with one minor annoyance. When you soft power off the system, the fans keep spinning so they no longer tell you when the system is fully shutdown. Minor and easy to live with,

for reference temps used to sit around 45Cusing opensense and now with the silent mod, i am around 51C.

Bit of a pain to get done, but i cant hear it and my ears thank me.

 

[nmpu]

Just an FYI if you want to do the fan mod....
The unit ships with nice (but load) Deltas, and the common just swap them for Noctuas is not as straight forward as you would think.
The board seems to monitor the current draw of the fan and if not enough is being pulled it wont spin the fans at all.

My system would initially spin the noctuas up

The device is capable of monitoring the RPM. The fan controller has thresholds. That's probably what needs to change. If you're lucky, you could just program the relevant registers via I2C.

 

[JaY_III]

The device is capable of monitoring the RPM. The fan controller has thresholds. That's probably what needs to change. If you're lucky, you could just program the relevant registers via I2C.

I could not get them to stay spinning without adding resistor between the ground and 12V.
I even tried two fans (1 RPM sensor) on a single header with no luck and got tired of fighting whatever the fan controller is programed to do.
So i picked 12V and no longer have any issues.