I’ll make sure to give the firewall a shot, then - I couldn’t explain it for the life of me but for whatever reason it’s always just gone straight over my head. Not like it’s too complex or anything… just a lack of willingness to learn! But that is changing :)
And it’s a Supermicro blade - I’ve already set up IPMI LOM! One of my favorite tools. I do a decent amount of sysadmin stuff at work, and we actually use somewhat similar servers - so luckily, I know what I’m doing there. But at work, IT does all of the firewall setup and everything for us, because we’re on one huge VPN - so I don’t ever have to worry about (or learn) security. Which explains some of why I don’t know it yet.
3D printing is the way to go, for sure. But if you’ve got the normal SFF optiplexes, I’ve got no idea how those will fit into a 1U form factor without a complete cooling system overhaul.