Low cost Tiny Box/ Mini ITX Mobo + CPU/ SoC choices: Sophos 9.x UTM Home & its Updates for 2/3 yrs

[crashnburn]

Low cost Tiny Box/ Mini ITX Mobo + CPU/ SoC choices: Sophos 9.x UTM Home & its Updates for 2/3 yrs

I was looking at bunch of platforms: Haswell, Broadwell, Braswell {pretty low cost}. Thoughts?

 

[Cloud200]

What are your bandwidth needs?
Generally speaking since a router is on all the time you want the platform that burns the least power at idle but gives you enough "oomph" to max out your connection.

The other issue is you must make sure the hardware is on the "Hardware Compatibility List" for Sophos.
Not much use to you if it wont pass traffic, eh?

 

[sfx2000]

CPU and Network Interfaces are the main things to consider - many of the lower end (and even mainstream) ITX desktop boards use Realtek interface chips, which can be problematic...

ADI has designed a pretty decent little ITX based machine - dual core Braswell with Intel NIC's for around $300... known to run pfSense out of the box, Netgate has them on-sale... considering that Intel's Braswell NUC goes for around $170, and doesn't have multiple NIC's puts things into perspective.

http://store.netgate.com/ADI/RCC-VE-2440.aspx

 

[Lee Sharp]

MITXPC also has some ready made boxes with SmallWall preinstalled. But they should be able to work with any flashed based firewall like pfSense.

http://www.mitxpc.com/products.php?cat=140

 

[oletuv]

I find the M350 Gigabyte-H170N (Skylake) from Mini-Box.com interesting:

- Gigabyte H170N WIFI Skylake Mini-ITX motherboard
- Corei5-6600, 1151 Skylake 3.3GHz
- 1x DVI-D, 2x HDMI
- 2x Intel LAN Ports
- 4x Rear USB + 1x USB TYPE C
- 6x Sata 6Gb/s - Supports Raid 0,1,5,10
- 2x Antenna Ports

 

[Lee Sharp]

I find the M350 Gigabyte-H170N (Skylake) from Mini-Box.com interesting:

At that price, it should be! You can get two of the SmallWall 2 port firewalls for that! Yes, it has a lot more power, but the MITXPC systems can get a solid 900meg on SmallWall.

 

[Deepcuts]

I find the M350 Gigabyte-H170N (Skylake) from Mini-Box.com interesting:

- Gigabyte H170N WIFI Skylake Mini-ITX motherboard
- Corei5-6600, 1151 Skylake 3.3GHz
- 1x DVI-D, 2x HDMI
- 2x Intel LAN Ports
- 4x Rear USB + 1x USB TYPE C
- 6x Sata 6Gb/s - Supports Raid 0,1,5,10
- 2x Antenna Ports

Only 1 nic support in Sophos.(atm)
M.2 not supported yet. (grub)

 

[crashnburn]

Thanks for the interesting suggestions. That's a nice wide variety. I will go through them.

Currently Asian Nation: 10M down/ 1-2M up - 15-20 clients. Not major.

 

[oletuv]

What do you knowlegdeable guys think of this Mini-ITX box for running pfSense? Seems like all Intel NICs and a pretty decent CPU.

 

[degrub]

You may be better off with a high clock rate core I-3 if you do anything beyond firewall such as IPS and have more than a couple users active. Looks like a great little board.