Have been using pfSense for years at our datacenter, very happy with it running on old dedicate hardware with failover. The hardware is overdue to be retired and I'm wondering what people are doing/recommending for a datacenter setup. We want to use OpenVPN Server, IDS, dBandwidth, etc... so need to keep out option open for the ability to run packages... behind it we are running multiple servers and vCenter/ESXI servers.
What's the go-to setup for a datacenter these days? Do we stick with two dedicated boxes? Since we pay for power, nice to have lower power... So do we go as low as using embedded hardware? It used to not be recommended for packages... still the case I assume? So I'm leaning towards some of the newer SuperMicro Atom boxes (quad core, or 8 core!!??! etc...). But then I see so many people running pfSense in VMWare and I wonder if we should consider this. Then I think about the hardware needs and VMWare Licensing (would like to avoid)... and what else can I run on the hardware along side without hurting pfSense from running properly, etc... If pfSense is setup to failover, that means the hardware can be cheap.... No RAID needed. If dedicated, do I go with Hard Drives/SSD drives? USB? We need packages... can I run it off of USB stick then or do I still need HDD/SSD? If setting up new hardware so can run pfSense as Virtual Machines... I would need two VM Hosts running pfSense as VM's so would have the failover... What should we consider for the hardware in this case... should I go with RAID w/HDD/SSD on ESXI? If pfSense is setup for failover, do I really need RAID? But I assume I would need something reliable if I'm going to run other non-pfsense VMs on the same hardware... so I would need RAID w/HDD/SSD and it would need to be larger... what are other people running in datacenter setups along side the pfSense? I don't want to put it onto our existing vCenter infrastructure, licensing/costs and isolation needed. Do I setup one hardware as basic, no RAID running ESXI and pfSense, and the other more robust setup (RAID, more memory). I'm really interested in what people are using in production environments/datacenters. Regards, Chuck
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