Vault FW6D - 6-Port Firewall/Mini PC Intel Quad Core i5 (8250U), AES-NI, Barebone - Compatible with pfSense/OPNsense etc.

Running as a proxmox server. That hosts dns, bind, pihole, tailscale, …

If you're not put off by installing and configuring an open source firewall, this little computer is for you. It's made in the USA, which makes it expensive, but the build quality is excellent, and the system is extremely reliable. I deployed a pfsense firewall for my company with this unit, managing several wired and wireless networks and users. So far, this has been the most relaiable router I've ever had. Network speed is high and stable, and there hasn't been a single glitch, outage or other disruption since deployment. It just works.

Great quality per dollar, the hardware is top notch and much cheaper than from China. 6 intel ports I5 8250U and DDR4, works great as a firewall or proxmox The one caveat is that COREBOOT is not supported yet I’m very happy supporting an American company

The product is a nice compact "appliance". I purchased for a small remote site as a small independent ESXi host. (i5 4 core/8 w/multithreading). It has no fan, so don't push to 100%. Even at 70% the case was very warm to the touch, but dissipated heat well. Besides the ESXi host, we run two VMs, a OPNSense firewall, and an app server. Would could easily double the load if necessary. We have vmnic0 and 1 as our WANs. We have the rest as our VM Network. Our first bottlenecks would not be the processor with the apps we are running, but the 16 GB RAM, and the small 130 GB SSD which we separately purchased. The hardware on the motherboard though, was not perfect on the first unit. We did have to do a return on the first unit because one of the disk drive connectors on the motherboard wasn't connected properly. ProtectLI sent out a new unit while we used the first one in it's crippled state (1 drive down), when the replacement arrived, we moved the two disks (SSD and a SATA), and the two memory chips we also purchased to the new unit. The new unit is working great. We gave 5 stars because the second unit is working flawlessly. The customer service was professional, polite, and and the return/exchange expedient.

Bought it to use in Proxmox+pfSense setup as a replacement for my old router. It's powerful enough to host multiple small virtual instances so one can pack quite a lot of functionality into this small box. Small, quiet, cool (runs warm if there is big CPU load which is expected) in a nice package. Good purchase.

Short story: The product did not work and customer support was very disappointing. The single star is for mechanical build quality. Longer story: I did a lot of research and chose the FW6D, the barebones i5-8250 Vault 6, at an absolutely killer price. The reviews of Protectli customer support were glowing, so job well done by me. Initial impressions were good: Hardware mechanical build quality was impressive. However, there were two problems. The first problem was an apparent memory addressing issue. Memtest failed, always getting stuck at the same bit address. I tried two HyperX SODIMMs so it was the processor board, not the memory. The product does not work. Okay, so customer support will do an exchange, like they did for other customers who left glowing reviews. Now the second problem: No, Protectli customer support was adamant that they wanted nothing to do with an exchange via customs with their U.S. based operation. They were not going there. Full stop. They recommended I return the unit to Amazon Canada as defective, for a refund. If I wanted an "exchange", I could purchase the same model again. However, at that time, Protectli was in a dispute with Amazon Canada over commercial terms so the FW6D was not presently available for sale in Canada via Amazon Canada. They warned that the price was likely to be higher when it did come on sale again. Yes, it is more expensive since coming back on sale at Amazon Canada. It is hundreds of dollars more expensive now. That is a Protectli exchange in Canada. My data point says this is what your expectation should be for customer support. I recommend that you not buy this expensive product based on an expectation of vendor customer support that includes a normal and satisfactory exchange of defective product.

I have purchased two of these units and am impressed with the performance. They are being used as my firewalls running PFSense. They perform flawlessly and are exactly what is needed.