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Recommended hardware for Sophos XG Firewall Home

Fred O.

Dear Sophos Community,

Hereby 3 questions regarding recommended hardware for Sophos XG Firewall Home.
We want to test XG Home to see if XG can replace our current Sophos UTM.

Which processor is better? Intel i5-6300U or Intel Celeron J1900? I understood that a processor with 4-cores and no hyper threading is recommended. But I could not find any barebone that comes with that kind of processor (e.g. the recommended e3-1225v5).
How much storage space is needed? I probably will use mSATA or a 2.5" SSD.
Is VGA required? Most solutions come with HDMI or DP.

It would be nice if there would be a fanless solution with minimal 3 Intel NICs that would 100% fit the requirements, but I could not find it so far (e.g. from ZOTAC, Shuttle, Jetway, Gigabyte etc.). At this moment, the JBC385F551 (from Jetway) is the best I found, but it has a hyper threading processor and it uses DP (no VGA). JBC501F9QU-Q87-B looks also nice, but it has only 2 NICs and it supports old processors (generation 4) e.g. i5-4460T.

Best, Fredo



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  • 0

    Hi,

    I would suggest you do a search of the forum because there are many answers.

    My latest incarnation is a e3-1225v5, 8gb of ram (6 usable) and 120ssd. The motherboard is an Asus P10S-I which is a mini itx board. The MB comes with two onboard intel NICs and an expansion slot. Not sure why you would need 3 nics, but that is your decision. m.sata drives are not recognised by the current XG version or at least the chipset isn't.

    So, you turn off hyperthreading.

    The CPU in some of the lower end Sophos boxes are Atoms and celerons and they don't get in to the serious processors until you start looking at high internet speeds with lots of users.

    There are many suggestions.

     make sure it has other nics than i219, these are not supported.

    Ian

  • 0 in reply to rfcat_vk

    Dear Ian.

    Thank you for your fast answers,

    Can you please answer my VGA question? Is VGA required, or would DisplayPort also work? Most solutions come with HDMI (I understood that this is not supported) and not many support VGA.

    So Intel i3 or i5 with hyper threading is fine, but I should disable hyper threading.

    I should have a SSD of minimal 120GB.

    So far I found it must be Intel NICs, I did not read that some Intel NICs are not supported; thanks for the i219 warning. Please let me know if there any other unsupported Intel NICs. I want to use minimal 3 NICs: LAN, internet & DMZ.

    Best, Fredo

    PS. The Asus P10S-I looks nice. But I rather do not build the complete system (adding RAM & SSD is fine) and I prefer a fanless system.

  • 0 in reply to Fred O.

    Hi Fredo,

    VGA is not required. but having said that not all DP or HDMI chipsets are supported. My main XG uses DVI.

    For CPU, the recommendation is the fastest cheapest unit you can buy. Zotac has a range of fanless boxes. I am not sure the XG OS recognises hyperthreads also they don't add much in the way of processing power. The reason for not using a high performance CPU is that there is no large maths calculations required, so a fast Celeron or Atom will do the job.

    Some realtek NICs are supported but again you would need to research the compatible knowledge base.

     

    Ian

     

    Corrected spelling mistakes.

  • 0

    I'd just like to add that XG is running like a champ for me as a KVM guest. So, if you've got a linux server floating around with spare CPU and RAM, it is a very viable option for testing.

  • 0 in reply to Gary Parr

    Two last questions:

    1. Would this processor be enough for XG Home: Intel Celeron J1900, 2.0GHz Quad-Core, 10W, Bay Trail
    2. Is 4GB enough RAM?

    I need this device only for testing & home usage but it should also be reacting smooth and be able to carry some load.
    If this would work, this device looks very interesting: Jetway JBC130F53304‐19G (it has 4 * Intel i211AT & VGA). Jetway have some more devices with this processor that look nice (also fanless).

  • +1 in reply to Fred O.

    Hi Fred,

    that would work well, the memory limit only if you plan on lots of rules and tweaks. At the  moment both my XGs have 6gb and are running at 40-45%, 0ne has five rules and the other 6. The other issue will be your internet speed, both mine are soooo slowwww it is not funny and getting worse.

     

    Ian

  • 0 in reply to rfcat_vk

    If this processor would do, I go look now where I can buy this Jetway barebone:

    HBJC390F541XA19B
    Fanless Intel Celeron Bay Trail J1900 SoC Processor
    Supports up to 8GB
    6 * Intel i211AT Gigabit LAN
    VGA

  • 0 in reply to Fred O.

    Hi Fred,

    I believe most of the lower end UTM and XG devices use a similar processor. Most home users, me included have overkill in the processing power department.

    Ian