Mad Idea?
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This is similar to something I have asked before, but I'd like to semi ask it again.
As USB pen drives are so cheap, is there something to be said for running pfSense from one of these, with a cloned one also around and just swapping them from time to time (re-cloning them each time).
Is this a good idea? You could have a spare one as well, so you are constantly changing with one is used. And, if there is a 'HDD' failure, it would take seconds to shove in a copy. It would also allow you to go back to a 'pre new rules' version if you had a problem - and, again, doing so would take just seconds.
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That's exactly how I run pfsense - from a 2GB USB drive.
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And does it seem stable/reliable? I've had people saying that USB 'pen drives' can't cope with the use.
It is a multi-vLan setup - so, high use I guess.
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the 'nanobsd' versions of pfsense generally don't write to disk (a lot).
but there are downsides to the nanobsd/embedded releases …. see: https://doc.pfsense.org/index.php/Installing_pfSense#Full_vs_Embedded_vs_LiveCD