Repurpose Hardware
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Check my sig for what I'm running. BTW, wireless support in pfSense is not great, so you may want to rethink that.
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@datsys What I did was to choose the Lenovo M93p quad core i7 to repurpose because I wanted to max out the RAM to 32GB...like it a lot really nice machine to repurpose, and you can buy them without hard drive or OS to get the best deal on eBay. You want Intel NIC for a smooth operation as well. For Watchguard, see https://forum.netgate.com/topic/124734/watchguard-firebox-m400-m500
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@datsys said in Repurpose Hardware:
Given what we have in mind we plan to purchase 2 devices, 1 without wireless and 1 with wireless. The ideal minimum would be Gigabit, with 4 or 5 Ports, PoE, and not rack mount. The availability of good documentation of how to flash the device(s) would be valuable.
Don't bother with wireless, you'd be much better off with a unifi or Aruba InstantON access-point, FreeBSD WiFi support isn't the best.
You mention POE, that would be down to a switch not a router.
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@datsys said in Repurpose Hardware:
seems we should be looking mainly for WatchGuard or Netgear devices
Just for clarity, are you looking to install Netgate's pfSense software? Your description kind of doesn't sound like that...? The open source ("CE") version of pfSense can install on an amd64 (x86-64) compatible CPU and I would be surprised if a Netgear router had one, or a way to boot or view a console. (I'm not that familiar with WatchGuard hardware) Generally people trying out pfSense install it on a PC that has 2+ network cards.
Installation instructions for pfSense: https://docs.netgate.com/pfsense/en/latest/install/index.html
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@steveits Based on what Google has shown and is also supported by a post in this community, the WatchGuard X550e can run the software. The main concern I have with it is it seems to be rack mount hardware and I was hoping for something smaller.
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The mini PCs, such as the one I have, are fairly small. They're much smaller than a typical PC and consume a lot less power. With mine, even when running speedtest and getting better than 900 Mb down, the CPU runs just a few percent.
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@jknott I took the time to share this discussion with my partners in crime during lunch and it turns out that your advice has closed the deal. So the plan is to use an SFF (possibly an HP EliteDesk 800 G1 or G2) given the physical size and the number of RAM slots it would have. Going after a bare-bones unit on eBay so that we can install Intel i7 or i5, 32GB RAM, 250 or 300GB SSD, and a PCIe Network Card with 4 Ports (using the built-in Port as WAN).
I figure this should comfortably run the current release of PFsense and there are 3 things I would appreciate from you. (1) A link to the information that we should use for installation and setup/configuration; (2) Any advice you might have that we can benefit from (given your experience); (3) Your permission to reach out to you directly for any other help we might need in setting this thing up.
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@datsys Well, I'm certainly happy to help, but I'm not certain how much of an expert I'd be. However, my area of specialty is using IPv6 on pfSense. A reference would be the pfSense book. Installing pfSense, with a basic config is easy, but there are some hardware issues. One, which I mentioned, is wireless support is not great, so you're better off with a separate access point. Also some NICs, such as Intel, work better that others.
My first pfSense install was on a HP compact destop computer, but after it died I replaced it with the Qotom described in my sig.
Give it a try and let us know what questions or issues come up.
Perhaps you can describe what's important to you, so others can help too.
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@jknott I am looking forward to all the help I can get. I believe we should get all the related components purchased by the end of this week for delivery by the end of next week. As soon as the machine is up and running I will let you know and we can go from there.
Thanks to everyone for their advice.
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@datsys said in Repurpose Hardware:
Based on what Google has shown and is also supported by a post in this community, the WatchGuard X550e can run the software.
Just for clarity that device has a 32bit CPU so cannot run current pfSense and hasn't been able to for years.
The Celeron M 320 was released in 2004. It's an antique!Steve
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@stephenw10 said in Repurpose Hardware:
The Celeron M 320 was released in 2004. It's an antique!
There are several mini PCs available that would be more suitable. Some of them are aimed at the pfSense & OPNsense market. There are also some YouTube videos about setting up pfSense on mini PCs.
BTW, one other factor these days is the NICs. When I got my Qotom, 1 Gb was the fastest, but shortly after 2.5 Gb became available. Many ISP's are now offering greater than 1 Gb connections (mine has 8 Gb available).
I wouldn't buy 32 bit anything these days, due to the lack of support for it. A few years ago, I tossed my IBM Netfinity server, as it was 32 bit and no longer capable of running the latest version of openSUSE Linux.
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Yes exactly there are many many devices that are better targets for pfSense. It just annoys me that there are still people trying to sell those 32bit boxes as 'pfSense devices' on ebay.
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@datsys Don't over look the Lenovo quoted above made between 2016-2020; many from corperations and gov came off lease and are selling cheap on eBay, especially if you get one without an OS. Then, you can get dual 128GB SSD for raid set up and max out the RAM for less than $100. I see Lenovo m900 SFF box with 6th generation i7 and DDR4 RAM for $98 with no HD on eBay. Keep in mind whatever you get should/must be able to do AES-NI CPU crypto.
