another os
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@mer The intention is not to buy and replace the the OS, but the device could be outdated by usage and technology requirements. The appliances does not seem to be "upgradeable", instead of throwing it away or giving as a gift/donation, or putting it in storage, we could use it for something else.
As far as the warranties might have elapsed by that time. Currently we are using pfsense on an older server that is hard to beat its performance/price except the power consumption.
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You might could get something else to install on the hardware, but I would not buy it if that was your sole purpose for purchasing, or if that capability is important to you after it is pulled from duty as an active firewall.
I would say that by the time pfSense no longer supports the hardware, other operating systems are also likely to have lost hardware support for it. The most likely area of difficulty installing another OS is the boot-up sequence. Some of the Netgate hardware devices have unique boot-up needs (meaning some special chip interfaces). The same is true for some of the hardware of other dedicated firewall appliance suppliers like Deciso (they make purpose-built hardware for OPNsense).
The original "Factory Edition pfSense" (which later became pfSense Plus) came about because of the specific hardware requirements of the Netgate appliances.
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@bmeeks said in another os:
I would say that by the time pfSense no longer supports the hardware, other operating systems are also likely to have lost hardware support for it.
Still running pfSense+ on my 2016 Netgate SG-4860
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@NogBadTheBad said in another os:
Netgate SG-4860
This device seems to be in EOL list; do you get software updates?
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@evanp456 yup I’m running the latest version of pfSense+
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@evanp456
@NogBadTheBad's reply was my original point. His EOL hardware is still supported by the Netgate team with pfSense Plus updates.By the time pfSense Plus no longer supports the hardware in an SG-4860, it's highly likely that no other operating system distro will either. My bet is the same holds true for newer appliances like the 6100.
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@evanp456 Netgate doesn't stop releasing software for older hardware. In general they will do so until it's not possible anymore. We have several clients with older models that still upgrade.
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@SteveITS
@NogBadTheBad
@bmeeksThanks all for the information, we do not have any experience with the Netgate's hardware; It sounds though that they do good work with PFsense and updates.
The main attraction is that netgate's hardware seem to be well priced for what they offer. So if we need to upgrade in a year or so it would be great to use the appliance for another use.
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While there isn't a general answer for all Netgate hardware, the 4100/6100/8200 line are, at their core, Intel C3xxx systems that could run pretty much any OS compatible with amd64/x86_64 and a serial console if you want. We only officially support TNSR and pfSense so that's all we can really recommend.
We do recommend using an SSD (e.g. the MAX variant) with these models where possible with TNSR (which is based on Ubuntu, but was formerly based on CentOS a few years ago) for a variety of reasons.
All that said, some of us have installed other things when testing (e.g. Debian+Proxmox VE) and didn't have any notable issues. Your main issue is going to be making the OS boot with a serial console instead of video. Some distributions make that simple, others make it nearly impossible.
Like others have said, Netgate does our best to support hardware for as long as possible. In most cases we are limited by the base OS here, especially when it comes to ARM-based hardware. There are plenty of older 64-bit hardware models that still function on current versions many years past their EOL date because, at least so far, there haven't been any changes in the underlying OS which break them.
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@jimp said in another os:
Like others have said, Netgate does our best to support hardware for as long as possible.
My SG-2440 is a good example of this.
It perfect sitting in the closet as a cold backup if needed right now.Following is my opinion:
As for the OP question, if it's out of warranty, add non-eMMC storage reinstall the latest using ZFS and use it as a cold/warm backup.
