Currently i use a Netgear GS748T managed switch for my VLAN's Please have a look for a Cisco SG-300 or D-Link DGS-1510 that are Layer3 Switches and they are routing the VLANs without the need of a router with neraly wire speed! but my current router (Fritzbox 7490) does not support VLAN tagging. Together with an Layer3 Switch you might be able to run your FB 7490 and let the Layer3 Switch do the entire VLAN routing and you don´t need really the pfSense. I do have a spare Intel I3 2120 CPU free so this could be an option. Any desktop CPU over 2,0GHz and higher might be a really nice candidate to get enough speed for your action. How much memory shoudl i be using if i also want to use VPN options and reverse proxy? Do i need extra NIC's (besides 2) 2 GB for the base system without other packets should be right 4 GB together with Snort installed and VPN tasks 8 GB together with Squid, Snort and VPN tasks or Captive Portal might be a good amount of RAM.

FWIW, and I'm not really a Hyper-V expert, but I saw a similar performance hit when I built a pfSense FW on my 2008 R2 server.  I had to use the legacy NICs, but they are supposed to be capable of 100 Mb anyway.  My pipe is 100 Mb and I can achieve 96 Mb at Speedtest.net through my lowly 10 year old Via C7 appliance, but only 20-30 Mb with the VM.  I was hoping to replace the old hardware soon since x86 pfSense will go away with 2.4.

It's possible that the different sites are referring to different things - Storage, or Operating temperatures, or bare board (the boards inside are not exclusive to the chassis). I'd go with Netgate as a reference since they manufacture the units.

If you're in a 1U chassis, all sorts of options are open to you. Without giving specific recommendations, I can list what I'd prioritize. I'm not going to go for embedded solution answers due to your 1U preference, though the pfsense store does have 1U appliances that will likely crush your workload. 1.  High clock speed, and at least four cores (not 2 cores with SMT). OpenVPN tunnels are currently single threaded.  You have three, as do I, so each can use a single logical core, but the raw speed of that core will ultimately determine the throughput of each tunnel. 2.  AES-NI will help now. QuickAssist for the future. 3. Ultimate future-proofing would be a socketed (and therefore likely NOT fanless) motherboard, but having a 1U chassis where you can swap the board without replacing the entire system second best. 4.  Upgradeable RAM.  4GB is probably fine for your use case.  But for the future…  ECC if you're especially concerned with uptime.  Likely you'll be upgrading and therefore rebooting far more often than is warranted by ECC. 5. A combination of embedded Intel NICs and a PCI-e x4 slot to add more (or to use your older NIC with the em driver). As for your storage questions, I'll leave those for others to answer.  I'd love to see pfsense run from rpool with the ability to add a mirror.

PCEngines APUC4 http://www.pcengines.ch/apu.htm 300/30 ok but not the 500/50 this will be not really nice with pfSense in that moment. Supermicro X10SBA-L http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/celeron/x10/x10sba-l.cfm To high in price compared to the overred CPU power and the jetway NF9HG-2930 is cheaper an better in my eyes, because it supports DDR3-1600MHz RAM modules and it is sufficient to run many packets on pfSense and on top it is 100 % compatible to pfSense. Gigabyte GA-J1900N-D3V http://www.gigabyte.co.nl/products/product-page.aspx?pid=4918#ov Gigabyte GA-N3150N-D3V http://www.gigabyte.co.nl/products/product-page.aspx?pid=5631#ov J1900 would be to low power offering but the N3150 would make sense to me, but is not really my choice then better to go with a C2558 or the NF9HG-2930 thats would be my first choice here in that case.

Alright, I'll have to enable it the next time, I'm in the datacenters… Danke dir ;-)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813182243 $209.99 Jetway NF9HG-2930 Thin mini-ITX Network Motherboard ~$204 Jetway NF9HG-2930 Quad core CPU 1,8GHz -2.16 GHz max. 8 GB non-ECC RAM 2 x miniPCIe slot (mSATA & WiFI card) 4 x Intel based LAN Ports http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833320136 $93.99 WLN200NX or UBNT SR71-E if internal is really needed for $25 - $50. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820226353 $114.99 mSATA 60GB or 64 GB for something around ~$60 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820139220X2 $48 Dead link what is this? http://compare.ebay.com/like/271147230901?var=lv<yp=AllFixedPriceItemTypes&var=sbar $36.19 Dead link, what is this? http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811152131 $69.99 M350 for ~$40 PSU ~$15 RAM ~$45 Would this hardware work with pfsense? Maybe someone has a clue? APU4D or APU4C as a bundle for something around 250 € Jetway NF9HG-2930 for something around 400 € Supermicro E200-9B (SYS-E200-9B) ~450 € - 500 € (New revision 1.02B is needed to run pfSense on it smooth and liquid) The Intel Xeon E3-12xxv3 would be the best option for as I see it right.

Good build but I am not liking the Supermicro Case. Not a lot of vents for good air circulation. The CPU will survive high temperatures but not ideal. The M350 has decent vents but way too small.

@magicteddy: Hi, yes serial means comport i/o for installing and management. -teddy I assembled the APU2C4 with SSD 16GB in the Black metal case, I don't understand why they have chosen to have 3 NIC's instead of 2 on this board, is this maybe because of the basic setup on IPFire? Second I installed pfSense-CE-memstick-serial-2.3.2-RELEASE-amd64.img. I got a bit confused at the point of choosing a custom kernel configuration. I could choose between <standard kernel="">and <embedded kernel="" (no="" vga="" console,="" keyboard)="">, I choose the embedded kernel, was it the right choice? I did not expect this Q, as I was installing the serial version as serial would already suggest that there is no keyboard or vga, can you explain this to me or should I have chosen the standard kernel? After this I edited (simple find and replace) my previous config file by changing em0 to igb0 and em1 to igb1. Everything is up and running now ;) . What about bios updates, would you advise to do these or when it installs and runs stay away from them? And are there specific settings in the pfS that I have to set (cause I restored a pfS config from an ATX board). So like are there thermal sensors and so on?? Thanks for your help and time, Cheers Qinn</embedded></standard>

@sparky_3: If you have 2U to work with why don't you get a 1U server chassis for Pfsense and a 1U switch. This is probably easier and maybe cheaper than hacking both in the same case. 1U equipment can be more expensive so you can get desktop models and put them on a rack mount shelf if needed. Dito. A 1u switch and 1u case with front I/O would be a better option and would make upgrading easier.

Yeah, an ESXi box would likely set me back $1000 minimum if I was to go purchase a refurb'd server. Looks like that would be the cheapest route as well. I think I'll try to rebuild using the hardware that I have currently lying around. Just need to troubleshoot what went wrong with the damn Lenovo where everything would randomly grind to a halt.

I have the same problem ? Did anyone get a solution for this? Thank You in advance

I believe they're both intel based, however i'm not sure of the exact models because the hardware is old I never had the box. The thing is, it all worked fine before I upgraded to the latest version about two weeks ago, I've tried downgrading to the old version I had but it still doesn't work.

@Dgghostkilla: Cool I will check it out I just bought this unit, preconfigured. I wiped the existing PFSense install and redid it with the newly released version. After playing with it at work to see what it can handle (it runs win10 surpringly well!) (i'll never use a preconfigured security appliance incase they made it, insecure) It's a great little box

If you want to go rackmount, why not pick up a used HP Proliant DL360 G7 (1U) on ebay? You can get a pretty loaded one for around $200 and they're beasts. I have one (way over kill) running pfSense at home and it has 2x Xeon X5650 Procs (hex core, 2.56Ghz for a total of 24 CPUs with HT), 48GB RAM, and 4 built in GB NICs.  I have 72GB 15K SAS HDDs in raid 5. I don't even get close to taxing it.

For configuring all ports on SG 2440 or any pfSense firewall as Switch follow this link http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/how-to-pfsense-configure-network-interface-as-a-bridge-network-switch/