Review Request: Protectli Vault Pro 6600 series

[madowl]

Yesterday I got an email from Protectli that they have finally launched a series with onboard sfp+ interfaces and would really like to see what your take is on them compared to the other similar devices you've reviewed recently (like the GoWin 1U and the Minisforum MS-01 for example).

Protectli Vault - 6 Port

Explore all 6 Port Vault Firewalls: Intel CPUs, 6 NIC ports, fanless & silent.

protectli.com

Looking at the specs on paper compared to my Protectli 4-ports it really looks to me like the newer processor is overkill for just running PFSense. I'm curious though as to how much processing power is actually needed to push a decent amount of traffic through the interfaces and whether having IDS or other tools running on it justify the additional cost and cpu bump.

Look forward to seeing this reviewed if you can make it happen.

 

[elvisimprsntr]

Glad they kept the RJ45 COM port so I can connect my GPS receiver as a stratum 0 NTP source.

GitHub - elvisimprsntr/pfsense-ntp-gps: pfSense NTP GPS Server

pfSense NTP GPS Server. Contribute to elvisimprsntr/pfsense-ntp-gps development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

I'll likely wait for the previous generation to show up on evilBay at a substantial discount.

 

[louie1961]

Seems like a lot of money for what it is. You are paying a premium for a small sized PC. You could easily build yourself an 8L PC with all the same features for about half the money. Probably less if you step up to an ITX sized motherboard.

 

[madowl]

Seems like a lot of money for what it is. You are paying a premium for a small sized PC. You could easily build yourself an 8L PC with all the same features for about half the money. Probably less if you step up to an ITX sized motherboard.

I'm also curious as this compares to the Minisforum MS-01 that was reviewed a few weeks back, which is cheaper then the Vault Pro (even with the most expensive MS-01 processor option). For example I can't tell whether the VP6650 has a fan or not which would be a factor between purchasing the two for me. But I'm also interested in packet performance as well between the two because I haven't seen anything to show how processor speed is impacting network performance running something like PFSense or OPNSense. Not sure if the STH team is setup for doing line rate testing with iperf and similar tools but would really like to know what the difference is between these two little systems and what the minimal processor is these days for a configuration like this. I see a lot of celeron configurations for 4x1GB which seem to be just fine (unless you really load them up with IDS/IPS), but what is the config for 2x10GB + 2x2.5GB?

 

[elvisimprsntr]

@madowl

1. The VP6600 models look like they have two fans based on board photos.



2. Looks like it comes with a passive heat sink for a M.2 2280 SSD/NVMe



3. Protectli posts their own benchmarks, although the new VP6600 models have not been added yet.

pfSense® IPSec VPN Performance – Protectli Knowledge Base

kb.protectli.com

4. I would be curious how well the VP6600 models would be as a Proxmox hypervisor so one could run pfSense and others (i.e. web server) virtualized.

How to Install pfSense® CE as a VM on Proxmox VE – Protectli Knowledge Base

kb.protectli.com