Protectli Vault 4 Port, Firewall Micro Appliance/Mini PC - Intel Quad Core (Atom E3845), AES-NI, Barebone

I would give this item 10 stars if I could, it's an excellent product. This is a solid firewall with everything you'll need to secure your network. Lots of great features, and very easy to add snort service. Very reliable, have not encountered any hardware issues after 6 months of service. Very easy to update and very easy to administer. You will need to have a good understanding of firewalls to make use of all the features, but won't need to dig into a CLI reference book to make either simple or complex changes. This firewall has many features of firewalls costing thousands of dollars at a price comparable with SOHO equipment. The large SSD drive ensures I have more than enough space for all the logs the firewall services produce. With all the announcements from vendors like D-Link, Netgear, asus, etc. it's nice to know my firewall is not full of remotely executable holes that will never be fixed like so many other firewalls. If you are a tech savvy user looking for a higher quality firewall and router, this is perfect for you. If you are a network administrator looking for an inexpensive firewall at your home that has most of the features you use on a daily basis (vlan's, zones for separating interfaces, IDS and gateway AV) this is the firewall for you. If you are not comfortable with network terminology and unsure of how complicated it is to use pfsense, take a little bit of time to read the docs. The firewall wizards can help you setup many advanced features with relative ease.

So far, this appliance has been great. It's small, and fits into a 1U shelf. I got this to replace an old business PC that was running pfSense. The unit sits in a 1U rack in my basement. Ambient is temp controlled at ~21C and the unit normally runs 46-48C depending on workload. It's a small home network with ~10 devices (synology NAS, Plex server, 3 PCs, 2 Fire TVs, phones, and other random devices). I used my old AC router as an access point and it connected directly via cat6 so I could place it in the center of the house. The main reason I bought this is for the AES-NI, since upcoming releases of pfSense will require it at some point, and because I use a VPN service and wanted to run the client on the router. I can saturate my internet connection (100Mbps) and run Suricata simultaneously with some decent headroom (~60% CPU). I haven't done through testing on it, just hooked everything up, started the VPN and Suricata and started pumping traffic though on both the VPN and LAN interface, and it handled it like a champ. There's 4GB of RAM which is overkill for most (although Suricata should have, and I think requires 4 GB), and a 32GB ssd which is either overkill or not enough depending on application. It seems quite an unusual number as you only really need 1GB for the base install, 8GB if you want to install a ton of packages with headroom, but you would want more for caching (~100-250GB, or even more depending on application). So 32GB is an odd choice here... The unit overall runs well on little power (10-15W), is silent (although I don't care since it's in the basement), is powerful enough to run a 100Mbps VPN and Suricata simultaneously, and is quite compact. It doesn't come with WiFi, but you easily use a cheap or old consumer router as an access point (or buy an access point) so that you run some CAT6 and place it where it will work best. I would absolutely recommend this for a home or small business router if you're looking for something more serious than a consumer router and are at least generally familiar with pfSense. You get all of the power of pfSense in a tiny, low power package. If you are looking to just get started with pfSense, just use an old PC with 2 NICs, play with it, and learn what it can do. If you want to start getting some serious hardware without spending twice the price or more, this unit rocks.

The device works as intended, and has the specs to handle most consumer and small to medium business network traffic. With free software, the price is very competitive with commercial router packages, and with correct setup and best practices, may be more secure and cost less than ISP router rental. Works with the PF firewall on OpenBSD 6.9 (current) without frustration. Can replace most of the functions of typical consumer routers (DHCP, DNS) and NAT/SPI firewalls. Also very appropriate for a bridging firewall paired with a router. PF is widely used and there are ample resources for it on various BSD (Unix-like) systems. I did not test the alternative and popular pfSense product as I’m not pleased or optimistic about it’s recently changed license structure and future inclusion of closed source software; but this device is recommended by various resources for use with pfSense. Network interfaces use the well documented and well tested Intel em(4) driver. Has a serial terminal and comes with a DB9 to RJ45. Users can also map the console to VGA/USB keyboard or use a USB to RJ45 serial cable for machines lacking DB9 serial ports. Has 4 network sockets for network segmentation and management. The major concern is heat. It runs at around 50°C and is hot to the touch. The heat sink on the top could be better or have screw points for a fan. A typical USB 120mm fan sitting, on rubber feet, or even glued to the top can reduce temperature to 35-40°C. I’d consider this important outside of thermal controlled network centers. It does not have a wireless interface, though it could run as a WLAN AP with a USB WLAN adapter capable of hostAP mode using hostapd(8).

Great product, super easy to setup and get running with pfSense. Only two issues have already been called out by others, but I'll mention them again, because it would be nice to see them fixed in future releases. Make sure you get fan to keep it cool as the short, fat fins don't dissipate heat well at all. Mine got too hot to touch sitting in a rack with other gear. When setting it up and using multiple USB components, use a hub. The connectors are all really close and it's hard to get a Keyboard, USB Stick, and VGA connector all plugged in at the same time. Other than those 2 issues, I'd recommend this as a great cheap home firewall platform.

This has worked great for me, and I'd highly recommend it as an embedded network appliance at the price point. I've tried it with both pfSense on FreeBSD and Ubuntu Server on Linux, and all hardware seems to work natively without any rough corners or weird drivers. Since I imagine most people are going to use this as a network appliance and not generally have a display connected to it, the serial COM port (and included RJ45 to DB12 cable) is a fantastic benefit that you rarely see in consumer network hardware. It gives full access to the device's BIOS setup interface and most OSs' boot consoles, and makes setup and network troubleshooting far easier than the traditional approach of repurposing a keyboard and monitor, or the embedded router hell of resetting and praying for a default network configuration. I was able to install and configure pfSense from scratch without connecting a display or keyboard. Ubuntu required video to do initial setup, but could be configured to support the serial console shortly thereafter. The chassis build quality is solid, all the ports are flush and well aligned, and access to the DIMM slot, two mSATA slots, and SIM slot (still unsupported in the US? See the Q&A section) are accessible under the bottom panel with four screws. There are pre-drilled and grommeted holes for installing antenna, though the options for equipping this device with wireless hardware are somewhat limited, so you may want to look elsewhere if homebrewing a WAP is part of your plan - the only officially supported wireless card is a USB based 802.11a/b/g only device. It comes with a bracket for hanging this off of a standard monitor VESA mount, but since it's so ill equipped to drive a modern display, I can't anticipate that this would be useful. I can see no reason why you couldn't use it as a wall mount bracket, though, as this device would probably be pretty well suited for hiding in a network closet somewhere. The link, activity, and HDD LEDs are all clustered on what I would vaguely consider to be the "back" of the device - the side with the DC in and network ports, where one is likely to have the most wires plugged in. This makes it mildly inconvenient and ugly to position the device where these LEDs are actually visible, but whether this is something you'd even want to do is mostly a matter of preference.

I have been running consumer wifi routers as my home firewall, flashing the infamous Tomato-based firmware to things such as the Linksys WRT-54G, Asus RT-N16, and most recently, an Asus RT-AC68U. Running the Shibby flavor of Tomato has served me well, provided a lot of options, and has been uber reliable. But I always wanted more. More robustness, more reporting, more features (such as SSL inspection and full speed OpenVPN). The hardware that Tomato runs on is limited and cannot run more than 20Mpbs over OpenVPN due to the CPU power required. In comes this wonderful device. It's a full blown computer in a tiny box that is silent, fast, and efficient. It runs all the top rated firewall distribution (Untangle is my choice). And it runs it at blazing speed. OpenVPN at 75Mpbs (my current ISP speed)? No problem. Inspecting SSL URLs? Pfft. Reporting on everything one could ever ask for? Done. This thing has been rock solid, fast, and reliable. I highly recommend this to anyone who wants to run a "professional" firewall without the need for a dedicated PC (native or VM) to be running 24/7.

Update 2.5 years after purchasing: After being off for three weeks, the system refused to boot nor display anything over VGA or console so I submitted a support ticket to Protectli. They responded very quickly and after a few troubleshooting tests, they send a replacement unit out less than 12 hours after I contacted them. I will happily buy more devices from them in the future based on this interaction. Great little computer for a network firewall or embedded project. While it doesn't have great graphics, it works great for servers, firewalls, routers, and the like that don't need super high performance, graphics, storage, etc. I don't push the processor to the max, but I am able to get gigabit from NIC to NIC. They also work well in areas that are dusty since it has completely passive cooling.

Updated 11-4-2019 to add that we are now on 508+ days of uptime and still counting. Perfect little device! Setup was easy and everything worked great. I Installed PFsense and Suricata and they both work great with plenty of processor power & memory to spare. The people who are complaining about this not coming with software installed do not take security seriously. You do not want to start with pre-installed software on something like this. You want to install from scratch with software downloaded directly from the source. The LAST thing you want is to get a firewall with a pre-installed trojan or malware. UPDATE 12-26-2018 The little box continues to impress me. Our uptime is currently at 195 days which would be even higher but we had a battery backup die in the middle of a extended power outage. We currently have around 40 devices connected to it (printers, pcs, nas, cameras) and it handles everything without breaking a sweat. I highly recommend.