Suggest hardware for pfSense

[pcm81]

I would like to play with pfSense. Specifically interested in its real time firewall. I am looking for a good set of hardware to run this on. Clearly need 2x GBe ETH ports and after that would like a low power small form factor machine. Can any one suggest a good box to use for this or is piecing it together is my best option. What specs do I need to be looking for? How much ram, what CPU? Never ran pfSense before, so not sure how much of resource hog it is. Already running a 980X and a box with 2x 6-core xeons at home, so would like to go low power small form factor for this build, but not sure how low I should go....

Thanks ahead

 

[jumpncrash]

depending on your internet connection you might not really need 2 1gbps network interfaces. I am currently running my pfsense box on a d425kt board with an add-in 100mbps card. The machine has something like 2GB of ram, and a small 32GB SSD.
From the pfsense box it goes to a wireless router that I use as an access point and then to my 16 port gigabit switch.
I would have it go directly to the 16 port switch but for some odd reason the link doesn't come up if I do it directly.

edit:

I jsute realized I dind't really answer your question, but in all honesty a P3 with 512-768mb of ram should be pretty good for most things you need to do. The downside to that is power usage, any kabini or atom would be more than sufficient

 

[pcm81]

depending on your internet connection you might not really need 2 1gbps network interfaces. I am currently running my pfsense box on a d425kt board with an add-in 100mbps card. The machine has something like 2GB of ram, and a small 32GB SSD.
From the pfsense box it goes to a wireless router that I use as an access point and then to my 16 port gigabit switch.
I would have it go directly to the 16 port switch but for some odd reason the link doesn't come up if I do it directly.

edit:

I jsute realized I dind't really answer your question, but in all honesty a P3 with 512-768mb of ram should be pretty good for most things you need to do. The downside to that is power usage, any kabini or atom would be more than sufficient

I was thinking something like atom with couple gigs of ram. My internet speed is relatively slow (crapcast cable) but i was more concerned about the real-time AV running on PFSense; i don't just want "another router" I want to load it up with packages beyond what my Cisco RV325 has...

 

[Red Squirrel]

I had it running off a Pentium 3 based server for a while and it was fine. When I got my fibre connection I upgraded it to a Core2Duo based server. I just happened to got these used for super cheap though.

If building new, I would look into something like a 1U Supermicro Atom barebones, it's a nice form factor and more than enough power and cheaper than building a machine from scratch.

More expensive than they typically go for, but this one looks rather interesting:

http://www.ncix.com/detail/supermicro-5018a-ftn4-1u-atom-c2758-9a-91811.htm

I think you need to buy ram for it though, it does not specify if it comes with any. The cpu is built into the motherboard I think.

 

[pcm81]

I had it running off a Pentium 3 based server for a while and it was fine. When I got my fibre connection I upgraded it to a Core2Duo based server. I just happened to got these used for super cheap though.

If building new, I would look into something like a 1U Supermicro Atom barebones, it's a nice form factor and more than enough power and cheaper than building a machine from scratch.

More expensive than they typically go for, but this one looks rather interesting:

http://www.ncix.com/detail/supermicro-5018a-ftn4-1u-atom-c2758-9a-91811.htm

I think you need to buy ram for it though, it does not specify if it comes with any. The cpu is built into the motherboard I think.

Thanks, i'll look at it. I was thinking of supermicro size solutions, just was not sure if i could get away with atom and 2-4GB of ram or if i needed I3 with more ram to do a descent pfsense with real time AV scan etc.

 

[mxnerd]

https://doc.pfsense.org/index.php/HAVP_Package_for_HTTP_Anti-Virus_Scanning

Scanner issues

Why downloading large files is slow
HAVP will load the file in full and then scan it. To avoid this, set the Scan max file size up to 100-500 KB. In 90% cases of virus are small, and there is no need to scan large files. Scanning large downloadable files and archives can be done by the anti-virus program on the client station.

Don't think you need very powerful system.


Some prebuilt barebones.

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_n...sense+mini+itx&rh=n:541966,k:pfsense+mini+itx

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Saw you just got a server. If that server has 2 NICs and is running 24x7, I think you can get away with a pfSense virtual machine.