i have a qotom J1900 with 4 intel nics and 4gb ram for sale. i moved to a rackmount system. PM me if interested. I am from germany.

We did a basic ME_Cleaner on the Qotom firmware in the Qotom hardware topic, works fine (both IME firmware strip as well as HAP bit). So there's one way to get a low-risk reduction of attack surface.

is it better to buy a bare bone Device and add RAM & SSD or buy a configured complete Set ? If you will find something that is really matching to your needs take it, if not you are able to sort this with other hardware you will be able to get for cheap or they are matching better to your needs. Get a small Intel i3 or Core i5 with dual or quad cpu cores likes you like or need it. Intel Core i5-5200U Processor 3M Cache, up to 2.70 GHz = 5th generation Intel Core i5 CPU QOTOM-Q355G4 2017 DHL - shipping fee to Germany US $33.68 - time between 8-17 days - status: Available This item is in stock an will be sold from the Qotom flagship store on aliexpress.com They accept paypal, VISA and Master Card payment, if you prefer to order online they are able to provide you an amazon link, but you must ask them before placing the order because this will be not even able to realize, as I understood it!!! I would get it with 8 GB RAM and an Intel 60 GB mSATA.

And the older CPU's might be affected by the Intel AMT bug from may-2017 That might be "disabalabe" in the bios (atleast on my Lenovo) But i dont think i saw disable in the Qotom Bios. /Bingo

I have been using a Supermicro Xeon D-1518 based board with pfSense for about 8 months now and have had no issues (starting from 2.3.3 all the way to the current 2.4.2 version). https://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/Xeon/D/X10SDV-TP8F.cfm Hope this helps.

Just to follow up, NIC arrived and installed…had only two problems which had been resolved that was posted here: https://forum.pfsense.org/index.php?topic=140315.0 So now, I am waiting for the processor (AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000+ 3.1GHz Dual-Core Processor 89W) to arrive. However, here's an insight of the performance after running Snort, Suricata, pfBlockerNG, and Squid. After the processor is installed, I'll continue with further fine tuning. I am extremely happy with results so far despite the machine will last just a year (AES-NI issue).  

"My internet speed is 100Mbps and I don't see myself upgrading to 1Gbps anytime soon. " And what about local side vlans, or you just going to have 1 lan?  If your going to do vlans on your network then you will be hairpin for any intervlan traffic.  So its not only your internet speed you have to worry about unless your just going to be on 1 lan..

@norg: Do you mean the Qotum Q355G4 with that? seems to fit the specs you mentioned and yep unless I add taxes that's a nice price. Yep, the Q355G4.

Yeah, MIPS is never going to work.

@Finger79: 100+ GB datasets is gigantic, especially if that's every night.  Will you be doing any differential/incremental backups or snapshots?  Significantly reduces the size and duration of subsequent backup jobs after the first one runs. Won't be that much every night and yes, I'm looking at how to shape my backup methodology to minimize the amount of data I have to move.  I've also heard that eventually Verizon will look at what your doing when you exceed 10tb monthly on their GB service.  It's the limited unlimited plan just like many others out there. Roveer

It should be sufficient, the CPU, QX-420CA, has AES support and at least two fast cores.

@coreybrett: I was curious about the Zabbix packages in particular. Zabbix themselves have armhf precompiled binaries, I would not be surprised if this is possible on pfSense as well.

get something with a quad core, and add a ebay dual intel nic

@trottoluccia: Hello, I recently bought a Zotac CI323 as it has it is a low consumtion (6W) quand core with 2 NICs. All seems to be fine with pfsense 2.4 a part from the LAN spee that is indicating 100tx and all my LAN is gigabit (CAT 6 cables and Netger GS108e managed switch). Any idea if this is about the realtek NIC that CI323 has onboard and if there is any way to make it working properly? Thanks, MAX Both Zotac CI323 and CI327 benefit greatly form an updated version (currently 1.9) of Realtek device driver for its Ethernet interfaces. Follow this thread to perform the update: https://forum.pfsense.org/index.php?topic=103841.msg754411#msg754411 You might need to also address some issues with the SD card reader interface. Take a look at the following discussion: https://forum.pfsense.org/index.php?topic=137286.msg753220#msg753220 (CI 323 and CI327 share a lot in common)

Yes, that'll be fine…

@BlueKobold: Has anyone tried a clean install to APU2 (serial console)? It is a must do and not a could do in my eyes, because this is a serial console only device without any VGA interface or port and so it must be a serial console install! The right installer is a the serial amd64 memstick version or image tp write it down on an USB pen drive and install it from there!…. Super! Thank you… I will give it another go. I only have the 8GB SD card at the moment, so will use that. I will boot with the USB stick and install to SD. I keep the Alix with an older PF Sense on it just for days like today. My SLA with the kids is brutal, and penalties severe. ;) UPDATE: Successfully installed using "pfSense-CE-memstick-serial-2.4.1-RELEASE-amd64.img" using USB, onto SD card. Alix goes back in the box and all is good. Thanks again for your help.

@johnkeates: @VAMike: legacy pci slots are half duplex and bandwidth limited for gigabit traffic. you should be able to get more than 200Mbit, but there may be some limitations in the pci bridge. at any rate, pcie is a much better option. Looks like we're seeing this PCI limitation more and more often ;-) Maybe we should put this in the Wiki. Definitely for dual port cards, they really needed the PCI-X extensions (higher clock speed + 64 bits), which have been functionally obsolete for over a decade and aren't found on any current mobos AFAIK. (If there's a PCI slot at all, it's probably a bridge to PCIe, possibly shared with some other legacy stuff, and not really intended for high-bandwidth applications–it's just there for people who have some old serial port or firewire card or somesuch they don't want to get rid of or pay to replace with a new PCIe version.)