Good firewall option for SBS 2008
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I am currently running SBS2003 (Small Business Server) and need to upgrade.
SBS2008 is what I am looking at, but it no longer comes with ISA firewall.I like the price point of the hardware and it seems like there is a big community supporting pfsense, but it seems like doling out $600 for support changes the entire cost equation.
What are my chances of getting this running without paying in advance for $600 worth of support?
Will it work out of the box?
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Pretty good - few people who use pfSense are likely to have spent anything like that. Many like myself will have spent nothing on support.
It will certainly function as a basic SoHo firewall out of the box. You can then tune it to suit your needs.
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Impossible to give exact numbers but a good estimate is less than 1% of the user base purchases support. Still a considerable number (500+), but at least 99% get by without it so obviously it's easy enough to do on your own. Most all support customers have larger, complex networks, not a small SBS network. Only exception to that generally IT consultants or consulting companies who deploy at numerous customers and share support across them.
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Forum and Wiki support are free.
If you need/want immediate help when you have a problem then get a commercial support subscription from BSD Perimeter or a consultant that knows pfSense.
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I'm currently running SBS 2008 behind my PfSense server and it has been working great for about 1.5 years! I highly recommend it. I also didn't pay anything for PfSense support.
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I'm currently running SBS 2008 behind my PfSense server and it has been working great for about 1.5 years! I highly recommend it. I also didn't pay anything for PfSense support.
Would you be willing to share your configuration with me?
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It should work fine with sbs 2008 right out of the box. You only need to worry about opening ports if your are having outside users connect to the the sbs 2008 . For example, for email, web services, remote desktop etc.
