Install ON NSA4500

[Sramnath01]

I have some SonicWALL NSA 4500s HA Pair that I retired from work and I have been searching like heck to find out if I can install PFsense on them and can't find any information related to the larger class NSA firewalls.  I am unsure of what CPU it is using, can someone point me in the right direction or let me know if they will work?

[Guest]

@Sramnath01:

I have some SonicWALL NSA 4500s HA Pair that I retired from work and I have been searching like heck to find out if I can install PFsense on them and can't find any information related to the larger class NSA firewalls.  I am unsure of what CPU it is using, can someone point me in the right direction or let me know if they will work?

You'll need to know if they use x86 with a BIOS or UEFI. If it's MIPS or ARM or something like that, it will probably never work.

I checked some models in that 4000 series range, most of them seem to use a standard x86 PC type hardware but with custom mainboard design to allow extra connectors etc. It can probably be made to boot anything, including pfSense. It does seem to use rather underpowered hardware, so it might not give the best performance. To know more, we will need pictures of the inside of the device.

[stephenw10]

@http://www.timk.de/it-blog/a-analysis-of-sonicwall-nsa-reboot/:

Processor= “8 x 550 MHz Mips64 Octeon Processor”
Model= NSA 4500

Guessing nope. Though that is an older blog post, it's possible they used the name on different hardware.

Steve

[Guest]

Yeah, MIPS is never going to work.