NexCom 1041C - CF or HDD?
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My company is making the move to a datacenter, and we're looking to put in a firewall. pfsense seems like a great step forward from the proprietary pay-out-the-wazoo SonicWall lifestyle, and we're looking to purchase a Nexcom 1041.
However, I don't quite have a handle on the CF vs HDD installations – is there somewhere which documents what features a CF install will be lacking?
What size CF card should I be purchasing, if I want to boot the firewall from CF?
If I'm going to do an HDD install, I'm going to have to plug an HDD into another computer, get the image from the liveCD, plug the HDD into the NexCom and work from there, correct?
Any help is much appreciated! Thanks!
darius
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However, I don't quite have a handle on the CF vs HDD installations – is there somewhere which documents what features a CF install will be lacking?
You loose package support and also upgrading. To upgrade the card must be reflashed.
What size CF card should I be purchasing, if I want to boot the firewall from CF?
Anything above 64 megs. The image currently is 64 megs and will only use this space.
If I'm going to do an HDD install, I'm going to have to plug an HDD into another computer, get the image from the liveCD, plug the HDD into the NexCom and work from there, correct?
No, Nexcoms have video, keyboard, etc. They are exceptional units. I really wish they would send us some Free gear, we push them quite a bit.
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I have som nexcom 1041c in production, also as CARP cluster. Very nice units. I use both, CF and HDD installs with my units. I summed up some informations how to configure bios and so on for the nexcoms in an earlier mail: http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=pfsense-support&m=113688606829411&w=2
The only thing not so nice when you want to install to hdd is that you have to temporarily mount a ide cdrom to the unit and therefore have to remove the unit from the rack if you want to reinstall it.