Lots of suggestions on the hardware, but I see nobody mention anything
based around the new and much more powerful Avoton platform. The
platform is officially supported, and the pfSense store has hardware
based on it (looks to be the Supermicro 5018A-FTN4,
The Supermicro 5018A-FTN4 server
(http://www.supermicro.com/products/system/1U/5018/SYS-5018A-FTN4.cfm)
is a mostly prebuilt box with 4 gigabit ports. It sells for 504.99 USD
on amazon
(http://www.amazon.com/Supermicro-Rackmount-Barebone-Components-SYS-5018A-FTN4/dp/B00G3ED7D4/)
and ships to Australia, so I assume it ships to the UK as well. It only
has 4 ports by default, but you can add an Intel i350-T4 NIC (I got one
for ~150 USD a while ago off ebay myself) to add another 4 gigabit ports.
All up that should still be under 1000 USD which is very competitive
considering the C2758 is a much more powerful CPU than anything posted
so far excluding that one Xeon box from osnet.
Personally, I'd also run pfSense virtualized and pass the ports through
the use of virtual sitches, solely to make the entire thing nice and
portable across machines (the Avoton is very nice for that, since it has
the virtualization extensions to run decently fast).
--
Zia Nayamuth
On 23/10/14 20:32, Chris Bagnall wrote:
I'm trying to use a http://www.mini-itx.com/store/~FX5624 which I think is the
same box as your first link, if you can install onto here easily and frequently
then it must be me doing something wrong, aaagh
Certainly looks like the same unit. Are you trying to install onto a CF card
(those units have a CF slot) or are you trying to do a full install onto an SSD
or HDD?
Most of ours are done using the embedded install using a CF card, as follows:
- download 32-bit embedded image *with* VGA console
- use dd on a Linux or Mac system to write it to a suitable CF card
(instructions on pfSense wiki)
- insert CF card and boot box
- configure interfaces from command line in the usual manner
In the several dozen we’ve deployed, I don’t think any of them have been more
complicated than that. Of the two failures we’ve had in several years, both
have been down to a dodgy CF card, not the unit itself.
Hope that helps.
Kind regards,
Chris
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