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I've been looking to replace the ancient, used, power hungry, overbuilt 2U rack server I'm currently using for PfSsense with something lighter (ditto my Proxmox

I've been looking to replace the ancient, used, power hungry, overbuilt 2U rack server I'm currently using for PfSsense with something lighter (ditto my Proxmox server, incidentally). Last I used OPNsense it had issues with the NICs in whatever it was I put it on that caused it to frequently drop connections. Is there any recommended hardware for OPNsense?

hestefisk 5y ago
I have used a low power Qotom Intel-based mini pc with 4 NICs running Opnsense since version 18.x. I bought it off Amazon for 300 USD and it runs like a charm. It currently serves my 1Gbps fibre connection with significant amount of simultaneous workloads without a sweat. Only downside is in the older models the Qotom bios will not get past POST if no screen is plugged in, so you will need either a screen when you reboot or a stump VGA cable with a resistor built in. Apart from this, I can highly recommend it.
- radiowave 5y ago
  Seconded. These are my default choice for pfsense (and probably opnsense in the future). Only issue I've had is that if it's a J1900 Celeron CPU, ensure you have the machine set to boot via UEFI before installing. (IIRC there's an open issue for FreeBSD installations failing to legacy boot on J1900 boards.)
  - hestefisk 5y ago
    Good point. My current firewall is an older Celeron cpu and with 20+ devices hammering the 1Gbps fibre,I can hardly make it sweat.
tw04 5y ago
Stay away from Realtek and I’m sure you’ll be fine. Intel would be my first pick followed by Chelsio (for 10gb). Broadcom will be serviceable. In all cases I’d double check the individual chipset by doing a quick search on the forums whether you decide to go pf or opn.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
  Yeah, see, that's the kind of research I was hoping to avoid. I just want to buy one thing that I know will work.
  - tw04 5y ago
    You are going to run into that issue with literally any OS or distro you choose. If you don’t want to spend 30 seconds typing a search for i210 (or insert chipset) then you should buy one of the appliances that opnsense sells. Just expect to pay a premium to be lazy.
    - AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
      > You are going to run into that issue with literally any OS or distro you choose. PfSense offers a range of hardware they support, which disproves your assertion by itself without even mentioning companies like Apple and System76. > one of the appliances that opnsense sells. Just expect to pay a premium to be lazy. I'm totally willing to pay a premium to be lazy. Where did I imply otherwise? If OPNsense offers hardware these days then why didn't anyone just say so?
      - tw04 5y ago
        > PfSense offers a range of hardware they support, which disproves your assertion by itself without even mentioning companies like Apple and System76. That disproves nothing. If you want to build your own system you need to research hardware if you want to have a pain free deployment. > I'm totally willing to pay a premium to be lazy. Where did I imply otherwise? If OPNsense offers hardware these days then why didn't anyone just say so? This forum is generally filled with people who want to build their own. As for why nobody mentioned they sell hardware: probably because they sold hardware from the beginning and it’s advertised all over their site?
        AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
        > That disproves nothing. If you want to build your own system you need to research hardware if you want to have a pain free deployment. Again, I said nothing about building my own. > This forum is generally filled with people who want to build their own. This forum is generally filled with people with a lot of qualities. For instance, there are a lot of people here who buy Apple products, which are very much not in the spirit of building one's own. Your assumption doesn't make a lot of sense to me. > As for why nobody mentioned they sell hardware: probably because they sold hardware from the beginning and it’s advertised all over their site? That's fair, I haven't looked at their site in ages because the last time I used OPNsense was after the very initial split and to my recollection there was no hardware then.
xoa 5y ago
OPNsense NIC compatibility seems mostly down to FreeBSD compatibility since it's built on the latter. So you can look at guides for FreeBSD itself or other systems based upon it. For example, STH's rundown of "Top Picks for FreeNAS NICs" [0] applies pretty well to OPNsense as well. The short version is that Intel and Chelsio have excellent support, though for just 1 GbE not really any reason to get anything but Intel. STH recommends Chelsio for 10GbE+ and from my limited testing that matches my experience pushing OPNsense as well. The main thing I encountered you should be aware of is that OPNsense (at least as of the current version 21.x) does not enable the Chelsio driver (cxgbe) by default so you need to add the loader to have it recognized. See the FreeBSD man page cxgbe(4) [1], you can add that in the Web GUI via System > Tunables. ---- 0: https://www.servethehome.com/buyers-guides/top-hardware-components-freenas-nas-servers/top-picks-freenas-nics-networking/ https://www.servethehome.com/buyers-guides/top-hardware-comp... 1: https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=cxgbe&sektion=4 https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=cxgbe&sektion=4
AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
Alright, let me rephrase this since people are misunderstanding: Does the OPNsense project recommend or endorse any specific models of low-power all-in-one computer hardware for running OPNsense? And if no, is there any specific thing the community would recommend? I don't want to spend hours on research or build something on Newegg. I want to by a complete piece of hardware that I install OPNsense on and know that I won't have to worry about hardware compatibility. PS: Apparently OPNsense offers their own appliances these days just like PfSense does.
- pak9rabid 5y ago
  I use a few of these, they work great. Although I personally run Linux on them, I don't see any reason why OPNSense wouldn't work, as it's essentially just an x86_64 system: https://www.pcengines.ch/apu2.htm https://www.pcengines.ch/apu2.htm
  - ta384747382 5y ago
    I've been using one of these for over 5 years as a home router, it's been very stable, not a single issue, only reboots have been for OS upgrades. Very nice little boxes. Had to put it together initially (think the heat sink and nvme and case) but that was straight-forward. Has supported everything I've needed over the years.

hestefisk 5y ago

I have used a low power Qotom Intel-based mini pc with 4 NICs running Opnsense since version 18.x. I bought it off Amazon for 300 USD and it runs like a charm. It currently serves my 1Gbps fibre connection with significant amount of simultaneous workloads without a sweat. Only downside is in the older models the Qotom bios will not get past POST if no screen is plugged in, so you will need either a screen when you reboot or a stump VGA cable with a resistor built in. Apart from this, I can highly recommend it.

radiowave 5y ago
Seconded. These are my default choice for pfsense (and probably opnsense in the future). Only issue I've had is that if it's a J1900 Celeron CPU, ensure you have the machine set to boot via UEFI before installing. (IIRC there's an open issue for FreeBSD installations failing to legacy boot on J1900 boards.)
- hestefisk 5y ago
  Good point. My current firewall is an older Celeron cpu and with 20+ devices hammering the 1Gbps fibre,I can hardly make it sweat.

tw04 5y ago

Stay away from Realtek and I’m sure you’ll be fine. Intel would be my first pick followed by Chelsio (for 10gb). Broadcom will be serviceable. In all cases I’d double check the individual chipset by doing a quick search on the forums whether you decide to go pf or opn.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
Yeah, see, that's the kind of research I was hoping to avoid. I just want to buy one thing that I know will work.
- tw04 5y ago
  You are going to run into that issue with literally any OS or distro you choose. If you don’t want to spend 30 seconds typing a search for i210 (or insert chipset) then you should buy one of the appliances that opnsense sells. Just expect to pay a premium to be lazy.
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
    > You are going to run into that issue with literally any OS or distro you choose. PfSense offers a range of hardware they support, which disproves your assertion by itself without even mentioning companies like Apple and System76. > one of the appliances that opnsense sells. Just expect to pay a premium to be lazy. I'm totally willing to pay a premium to be lazy. Where did I imply otherwise? If OPNsense offers hardware these days then why didn't anyone just say so?
    - tw04 5y ago
      > PfSense offers a range of hardware they support, which disproves your assertion by itself without even mentioning companies like Apple and System76. That disproves nothing. If you want to build your own system you need to research hardware if you want to have a pain free deployment. > I'm totally willing to pay a premium to be lazy. Where did I imply otherwise? If OPNsense offers hardware these days then why didn't anyone just say so? This forum is generally filled with people who want to build their own. As for why nobody mentioned they sell hardware: probably because they sold hardware from the beginning and it’s advertised all over their site?
      - AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
        > That disproves nothing. If you want to build your own system you need to research hardware if you want to have a pain free deployment. Again, I said nothing about building my own. > This forum is generally filled with people who want to build their own. This forum is generally filled with people with a lot of qualities. For instance, there are a lot of people here who buy Apple products, which are very much not in the spirit of building one's own. Your assumption doesn't make a lot of sense to me. > As for why nobody mentioned they sell hardware: probably because they sold hardware from the beginning and it’s advertised all over their site? That's fair, I haven't looked at their site in ages because the last time I used OPNsense was after the very initial split and to my recollection there was no hardware then.

xoa 5y ago

OPNsense NIC compatibility seems mostly down to FreeBSD compatibility since it's built on the latter. So you can look at guides for FreeBSD itself or other systems based upon it. For example, STH's rundown of "Top Picks for FreeNAS NICs" [0] applies pretty well to OPNsense as well. The short version is that Intel and Chelsio have excellent support, though for just 1 GbE not really any reason to get anything but Intel. STH recommends Chelsio for 10GbE+ and from my limited testing that matches my experience pushing OPNsense as well. The main thing I encountered you should be aware of is that OPNsense (at least as of the current version 21.x) does not enable the Chelsio driver (cxgbe) by default so you need to add the loader to have it recognized. See the FreeBSD man page cxgbe(4) [1], you can add that in the Web GUI via System > Tunables. ---- 0: https://www.servethehome.com/buyers-guides/top-hardware-components-freenas-nas-servers/top-picks-freenas-nics-networking/ https://www.servethehome.com/buyers-guides/top-hardware-comp... 1: https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=cxgbe&sektion=4 https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=cxgbe&sektion=4

AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago

Alright, let me rephrase this since people are misunderstanding: Does the OPNsense project recommend or endorse any specific models of low-power all-in-one computer hardware for running OPNsense? And if no, is there any specific thing the community would recommend? I don't want to spend hours on research or build something on Newegg. I want to by a complete piece of hardware that I install OPNsense on and know that I won't have to worry about hardware compatibility. PS: Apparently OPNsense offers their own appliances these days just like PfSense does.

pak9rabid 5y ago
I use a few of these, they work great. Although I personally run Linux on them, I don't see any reason why OPNSense wouldn't work, as it's essentially just an x86_64 system: https://www.pcengines.ch/apu2.htm https://www.pcengines.ch/apu2.htm
- ta384747382 5y ago
  I've been using one of these for over 5 years as a home router, it's been very stable, not a single issue, only reboots have been for OS upgrades. Very nice little boxes. Had to put it together initially (think the heat sink and nvme and case) but that was straight-forward. Has supported everything I've needed over the years.