Best hard drive / Flash for stability
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Deciding to switch my clients to PFSense routers and building devices for them all. I'm planning a Shuttle DS81 with I3 and 4GB memory but not sure about hard drive. I usually go SSD with all installs but the write makes that solution not stable. Should I go USB, CF/SD or just 7200 spinning 2.5" drive? Wanting decent device without issues.
We're pretty new to PFSense (from untangle) so we're digging and testing everything now. Also as far as backup, can we use USB/SD and have it autobackup daily? or even better FTP upload backups to our FTP server?
Most clients are 20-80 employees so nothing crazy needed.
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USB and CF/SD are really just crappy SSDs. The biggest issue with modern SSDs are how they handle sudden power loss, not how many writes they can handle, unless you're using squid.
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So using something like a WD black would be best?
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I have made a couple with laptop sized WD black and WD blue drives and they just keep working. Zero problems.
I suspect you would get >5 years of 24/7 ops out of those.
SSDs are faster and some are very reliable when TRIM is configured properly.
I'd call it a preference issue unless you need a serious high speed cache in which case, hands down SSD is the way to go.
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Modern SSDs have fewer RMA claims and have longer warranty lengths. Not to mention the bonus of low power, quiet, no issues getting bumped. On average, SSDs are less likely to fail. You still need to be careful about firmware updates and other annoying things that can be dangerous.
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S3500 or S3700 Intel SSD.
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Don't forget a UPS for these customer firewalls. A few power failures and UFS gets hosed. Then you get to reload pfSense and restore the config.