Review on 🔒 Enhanced Security Firewall Micro Appliance/Mini PC - Protectli Vault 6 Port, Intel Dual Core i3, AES-NI, Barebone by Dave Hersma

I give this Protectli Vault 6 (FW6B) port five stars not because it's perfect but because it's functional. Let's remove the only negative (at least for my use case). I had a Samsung EVO860 SSD lying around (2.5 inch form factor). The FW6B has mounting brackets for a 2.5-inch drive under the cover. The brackets were too close together, making it difficult to install the SSD. It just didn't fit 100%. But in the end I was able to get it to work. I also installed a Patriot 8GB RAM stick, leaving the second memory slot open for future expansion. Regarding my configuration, I installed pfSense from USB as I wanted to create a reliable home router. . Everything installed with no problems. With pfSense, all 1GB network ports can be easily configured for WAN/LAN. So far my FW6B has been running for over 50 days without any problems. CPU usage is usually around 5% and I have enough memory. Maybe in the coming months I will improve the device a bit and add new features to pfSense. I'm seriously considering Protectli hardware as an alternative to the Intel NUC. I also have a three year old Intel NUC running a ProxMox VM hypervisor, but I am seriously considering the Protectli appliance as a future VM hypervisor host for future expansion. The fanless design is very attractive as it eliminates another mechanical device as a potential point of failure. I am very happy with this purchase and will definitely buy again.