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

I purchased the Protectli unit to replace an obsolete Cisco ASA5505, where Im running Pfsense on the Protectli. Im totally happy with the Vault where the performance exceeds the old 5505. Pfsense is certainly less hassle to deal with compared to the Cisco interface...

These cheap mass produced units most likely have hardware backdoors built into them. It makes really really good sense for China to push these into the world markets. Only buy if you want to greatly assist them in their worldly conquests. Real hardware costs more because name brands make sure to a reasonable extent that their hardware isnt compromised.

I have pfsense installed and been using it as my Primary Firewall/Router for the past 3 year. It has been great, I did mess up the configuration 1 time which gave me headache for half a day. Luckily i had backup of my previous configuration so it was just a matter of pfsense reinstallation and restoring the back up.

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?

I didn’t have any problems running this box with opnsense. Everything worked out fine configuring as a firewall.

Pulled it out of the box, plugged in a VGA monitor and USB keyboard and Rufus bootable pfSense on USB. Took about 10 minutes and it was running pfSense. Ive had it running for about 48 hours and so far it is perfect.

I started using Protectli Vaults in 2019 when I finally made the switch from Tomato routing to Untangle for residential routing. You can get a better price and even pick up the Vault at Protectlis offices in San Diego area. Very impressive business. I now have 5 J3160 units installed using Untangle (sorry, cant comment on Sophos or other UTM installs), and they are running with never an issue. The vaults are extremely well built, and you get much more processor/memory/SSD for your money than with UTs products (about 50% of the cost). Itd recommend at least a 120Gb mSATA and always use 8GB of RAM. Protectli is working on a Vault with SPF, so Im excited to get that when it comes out. Very pleased.

Installation of OPNsense was a breeze, although the installer defaulted the WAN/LAN ports reversed, an easy fix and documented on the protectli website (not really needed, as it is easy to figure out). I added the RAM and disk listed below, and so far it seems fast and stable (although I have only had it a short time).

I’ve installed pfsense and opnsense both. After installation when i change lan ip to 192.168.0.1 it stops working. But default configuration works fine. Also it gets hot you can’t even touch.

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