Recommendations for firewall (hardware/software) for area with power issues

[Frank Tarczynski]

I need to deploy a home firewall at the beach and am looking for a hardware/software combo that will survive repeated power outages.

I don't want to start a flame war; I just need some ideas for a secure firewall that's rugged and will deal OK with power issues.

Nothing from Netgear, Linksys, etc. I'm looking for something that will have good support. I was thinking of a small Netgate appliance, but my SG-1100 died just past 2 years so now I'm looking for something else.

I'm not adverse to building something like RPi/OpenWRT if that's the ways to go.

Frank

 

[BlueFox]

You just need a UPS. That's what they're designed to deal with.

 

[Stephan]

RPi will take serious issue with repeated unexpected power losses, because SD card contents will get corrupted if this happens during a write.

Recommend to get the cheapest E3 Xeon system you can find. Something like an E3-1245 or similar. Stuff a network card in there like some Intel i350, 1-4 ports, put a Micron 5100 ECO m.2 or SSD in the case, that one has power-loss protection in the form of a large capacitor bank. So can deal with outages alot better than an SD card.

Get the generic-ext4-combined-efi.img.gz from Index of /snapshots/targets/x86/64/ and install it to the SSD. Enlarge ext4. Configure etc. Set firewall in BIOS to Power-On no matter what the last state was.

Due to SSD PLP and ext4 journalling system should survive repeated power-off abuse.

UPS is nice but optional. I prefer Eaton Ellipse Eco 1600 (I'm in EU market) because it is silent when power is available. If you know how long the power-outages last, something like a Tripp Lite SmartPro SMART1500LCDT might be an option, to coast over the outages. If noise is an issue, make sure to google before if the fan turns off when batteries are full and UPS is unloaded.