Protectli Vault FW4B - 4 Port, Firewall Micro Appliance/Mini PC - Intel Quad Core, AES-NI, 8GB RAM, 120GB mSATA SSD

i purchased this to run pf sense firewall

Came with a loose screw inside and wouldnt post, acknowledge drives, or indicate any functionality past power being applied whatsoever. Great paperweight, awful electronic. You could do better with literally anything else.

The box could have done with a convective heat transfer element since it feels a little hot for cloistered storage. The OPNsense initial configuration has some default assumptions but there is always the folks in Tech Support if you are not the type to read the manual online.

8 days uptime as of writing - no unplanned reboots and plenty powerful enough for my home network. Solid metal case of which the heatsink is part of, which is an interesting design. Runs warm to the touch (29C) but not hot. I had no trouble getting pfsense 2.4.4 running - I imported my config from the router this replaced. Very nice.

Untangle 14.1.1 works flawlessly. Solid performance from the quad core Celeron, the ram and SSD. In the barbone version they say you should know how to install, but dont make any mention of which set of screws to remove to Best access the board. Even under load the aluminum heatsink keeps this unit cool.

Im using the Protectli Vault FW4B 8GB RAM, 120GB mSATA SSD as a firewall appliance for my extensive home network. It has enough horsepower to handle several people in the household watching video, a total of 35 clients on my gigabit network, a VoIP phone system, an at-home business and inbound and outbound VPN service. I bought model with the larger RAM and SSD drive for plenty of buffering and network storage space. The PFSense community edition software is free and easy to download and write into the firewall appliance. Using a keyboard and display, the basic bring-up is easy. Once the basic firewall is active, the more advanced features of the PFSense firewall sofware can be overwhelming at first for an intermediate IT professional. I use the firewall software to VPN through my Internet provider as well as offering remote access VPN sever to my network and file share. In my setup, the firewall appliance sits between my cable modem and a managed switch and my WiFi router (which has been re-configured to be an access point). The firewall appliance serves as a router with DHCP complete with VLANs for segregating traffic. The Protectli FW4B will definitely work for a large household and a small business.

Been running PF sense a year+ with no issues. The device looks very professional and has adequate specs for a good PF Sense firewall.

This thing is built like a tank! This is my first dip into running pfSense, and the question I could not seem to get a straight answer to is how much throughput is any particular hardware package good for?

Insert the USB drive in the lower USB port. The upper one would not boot for me.

The Protectli Vault FW4B is an excellent firewall micro appliance/mini PC that provides robust security and performance for your network. With its Intel Quad Core processor and AES-NI encryption, this micro appliance delivers exceptional performance and security for even the most demanding applications.