pfSense as VM or not

Homelab
1

Hi,

In video 2 of the homelab series, there’s a section about pfSense. Are you running pfSense on a dedicated device or VM?

I thought you have chosen the VM path, but not sure. I went to the video of your friend Tom on pfSense and he’s recommending a dedicated machine for it?

Any thoughts you can share on that? E.g. VM is fine for homelabs, dedicated is more for small business, etc?

Thank you for the feedback!

Regards,
/Tom

2

I don’t personally like to use VMs for something like pfsense, but many people do run it as a VM successfully. I prefer it to be separate, there’s some interesting challenges that you experience when you have virtualized your firewall.

On my end, I’m using this for pfsense:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07KM8Y54C

I don’t remember the price being that high when I ordered mine though.

3

Thanks! Then I got the message correctly from your friend Tom that I should use a dedicated device.

Have enough spare parts lying around for now to create a simple, yet powerful pfSense box.

Thanks again !

/Tom