Cooking Lab Build


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Ive had a Smart Home server running for a little over a year now; which was a quad core 2400G from AMD. This was working out great as it provided all the functionality I needed for a very affordable price. (paid about 750$ for the entire build, which was :

-2400G

-MSI X470 MB

-16Gb 3000Hmz Ram

-256GB Samsung 860 SSD

-650W PSU

 

For my network Ive had a ubiquity security gateway (USG) and  3 AP.

 

I also run a NAS and 2 mail servers.

 

Because of that I there are a lot of automated attacks on my network.

Now I don't run anything mission critical on my smart home (front door, video cameras) because of the risk of someone getting access to my network and being able to use those systems against me. So even if someone got in, they could not do any 'serious' harm or break in.

 

But still, I don't want my mail servers being used for anything else then sending and receiving emails it was suppose to, so I decided to upgrade the security to the Ubiquity dream machine, finally 1Gbps with IPS.

But that never happened...and is still not released. So I decided to setup a pfsense box. I do believe in "1 machine per task" but I also believe in "reduce energy bill" so I decided to get one new efficient machine that would handle a few tasks.

 

This is where cooking Lab comes in. Although there are some security concern with running pfsense in a VM, I decided to get Unraid and and run my Smart home server as a VM.

 

So the system is now :

 

-> Smart Home VM

-> Pf sense (firewall / router / IPS)

-> Windows Office PC

-> Unix Sever

-> Backup storage for NAS

 

All in one box (putting all eggs in one basket)

 

Since I already had the Smart home Server, all I added was

 

-AMD 3900X

-another 16GB 3000hmz ram

-Intel Quad Nic

-2x 4TB Ironwolf

 

Which has allowed me to retire

 

-Office PC

-Ubiquity security gateway (USG)

 

What do you guys/girls think about running pf sense as a VM, did a make the right decision or did I only invite more issues to come along?

Edited by SwedishCoder
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I ran pfsense as a vm for a little while. It became a pain whenever the server needed rebooting, especially if it was rebooting for troubleshooting that might be several times. Once everything was up and running, it was just fine. It could also be a pain if there was a problem with the server that would prevent the pfsense vm from running because then there would be no internet. Ultimately I decided that the added complication wasn't worth it. I ended up getting a Qotom pc to run pfsense. That was 3 years ago and it's been running great since.

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