Dual-NIC PC for VM deployment or standalone device?
-
Not sure what to do here, I have an i7 (2nd gen) PC with 16gb RAM and 500gb SSD that I use as my main desktop but also runs some VMs including Security Onion, RADIUS server, private DNS server, samba share for multimedia streaming to entire house.
I am pondering just getting a dual-NIC (http://www.amazon.com/dp/B000BMZHX2/) and installing pfSense as a virtual machine but not sure how much more I should offload onto my aging computer that runs 24/7. I would like to run it with Snort, Squid, SquidGuard, OpenVPN client and server and IPSec site-to-site. This is for home use and honestly the only reason why I am looking into this is because I dont want to fuss with openvpn clients needing to be on every host on my network so I would like to have it offloaded to the router (my asus RT-N66u with dd-wrt just cannot keep up with the encrypt/decrypt of even my meager 50/5 connection). I am also interested to learn more about networking and security in general so I expect to play with lots of different packages.
I was thinking I could get away with the sg2220 but I am thinking not so much if I ever plan to run all the packages I want and have VPN/encryption running. I wish the sg2220 just had the processor of the sg2440 with an extra 2gb of RAM… was thinking the Netgate RCC-VE 2440 fits the bill and includes extra 2 ethernet ports.
Suggestions? Thanks!