I'm currently using a QOTOM box which is mostly ok. It NATS and routes at gig speeds which I get from the ISP, but it only has 6 NICS. I'm looking for some recommendations on an appliance type box that would give me 8-12 NICs. Not sure if it's better to buy something or just build a server with NIC cards but I'd like to keep the 1U formfactor or even 2U if possible. I was looking at some stuff on this site
https://www.firewallhardware.it/en/
Mainly the following - https://www.miniserver.it/firewall/power-utm/firewall-appliance-power-utm-aluminum.html
but it seems a bit pricey for what it is considering it's DDR3, does't seem to have ECC, etc.
Just wondering what people's recommendations are for a box with 8-12 NICs in a 1U or 2U form factor.
Thanks in advance
You'll be moving into the 'pro' sector with that number of ports, and that's going to get expensive. It's far cheaper to just get a switch. There are a lot of good cheap low power switches, both managed and un-managed available.
I already have 2 layer 3 cisco switches I'm using, a 24 port and 48 port, core and access switches respectively. Someone on reddit suggested just doing a LAGG on OPNsense between the switches, which I might do, but I still think a bit beefier firewall would be better. I'm considering purchasing the following -
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32975669960.html?spm=a2g0o.productlist.0.0.fc7435a0eku0jb&algo_pvid=6e80f769-775f-4722-8cb1-de5b8c236d90&algo_expid=6e80f769-775f-4722-8cb1-de5b8c236d90-0&btsid=0ab6f81e15983144670171621e299a&ws_ab_test=searchweb0_0,searchweb201602_,searchweb201603_
The 16GB RAM, 64GB SSD and i7-4770 CPU version. CPU benchmarks shows the i7 4770 to be considerably beefier than the i7 7500U currently in my existing QOTOM box.
Very pretty... shame about the fans, but if you don't mind them it looks OK. Not sure about your spec comparison, 15% is not that much, but should do the job just fine.
https://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Core-i7-7500U-vs-Intel-Core-i7-4770/m171274vs1978 (https://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Core-i7-7500U-vs-Intel-Core-i7-4770/m171274vs1978)
Shame about the fans because of noise or as a possible point of failure? The noise won't bother me as the firewall will be located in an alternate room with the rest of my network gear and cisco switches.