Recently was given an old xtm505, is it too old/eol to be of any real use in self hosting/homelab? Tips/opinions appreciated!
Recently was given an old xtm505, is it too old/eol to be of any real use in self hosting/homelab? Tips/opinions appreciated!
It will be an exploration mission.
First, I can’t remember whether XTM 505 is
x86or not; Watchguard has a habit of mixing designations. There are similarly named models withx86and non-x86(usually, Freescale) processors. Other people say it is, so I’ll tentatively agree.You most likely will not be able to run a Watchguard device with stock firmware. So you will need an alternative. The easiest one will be OPNsense nano; just replace the stock CF card with one containing OPNsense nano, and it will run. Same with OpenWrt; write it onto a CF card, and it will run. Or you can experiment with adding SSDs. This may of may not go well, because you may or may not be able to get into BIOS.
Performance-wise, XTM 505 will give you basic Gigabit routing no problem (except that one of the ports is actually 100 Mbps). How much noise it will make doing that will depend entirely on the state of the fans.
Peak power consumption on XTM 505, if memory serves, is 85W.
What you want to do with all of the above is entirely up to you…