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

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.

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?

Great device to use as a firewall and vpn client.

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.

Perfect little box for pfsense.

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

I have installed 4 of these in my remote locations and they work flawlessly.

I got this directly from the vendor with OpnSense installed. Its a nice little machine. Much better that your standard router/wifi combo. I have my old wtr in ap mode now. Protectli has good customer support should you have an issue.

I use these and vaiants for many pfsense deployments for home and commercial projects. Great hardware and well worth the price. I will continue to use these in future projects.

This is my third unit that has now failed. There is an issue with some function with the motherboard that fails prematurely. The latest has a QC mark indicating a manufacture date of late 2018. I have had dozens of computers and none have had this high a failure rate in such a short period of time. If you need fanless SFF then these work well when they run but be prepared for it to die within a few years.