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

Started out with 1 vault, planned to have 2 vaults for managing 2 locations. The first one came with bad RAM and bad CPU.

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.

i purchased this to run pf sense firewall

Running OPNsense on this and it works great. I love that the ports are already labeled like a router. Install of OPNsense was easy and worked first try. It gets a bit warm but not horribly so, just dont set anything on top of it. Small price to pay to not have a fan.

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?

Perfect for pfsense.

Why did i not find this sooner.....

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 Protectli Vault FW4B replaced my ISP’s Router/Modem/WiFi Combo:

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.