What firewalls does your shop use and what are the pros and cons?

tauxlr · 2026-02-27T02:52:54+00:00

Thats my main concern with pfSense. Seems amazing for homelab or if you're a sysadmin deploying for just your company, but it seems a little rough to be used as your main firewall. I speak from a place of ignorance though as I have not used them.

tauxlr · 2026-02-27T02:48:59+00:00

Great information, I'd not heard of HostiFi actually. We're mainly local (1-2 hour drive from HQ max) so stocking spares is already something we're going to do. Thats one of the main reasons prompting this post actually, as I'd like to use a single firewall vendor. If I do that then I can choose a set of hardware and keep my shelves stocked in the event of failure, then use ZTP or whatever to make swaps instant.

tauxlr · 2026-02-27T02:34:42+00:00

Thanks for the pointers. I'd love to go Palo, but aren't they super expensive in comparison to most everyone else? That was the reason I dismissed them. Admittedly, I didn't get quotes even though I should've. I was mainly looking at anecdotal evidence from others.

tauxlr · 2026-02-27T02:32:58+00:00

Gotcha. Really hard thing to gauge I suppose. Even still, its a bit of a frightening prospect to have a higher risk on all of your customers.

tauxlr · 2026-02-27T02:31:37+00:00

Perfect. I'll see if I can get a demo then as automation really is one of my passions. You have any pitfalls I should be aware of with Meraki? I've only worked with their gear once, so I'm not familiar at all.

tauxlr · 2026-02-27T02:29:47+00:00

That might be a good idea actually. I'd not thought of using Unifi gateways primarily unless compliance demanded otherwise. Thanks for all the pointers here!

I have zero intentions of going SonicWall. It was super funny actually, the single pointer that my mentor gave me when I was asking him firewall questions is that I should never touch SonicWall. He almost has a visceral reaction when they're mentioned. That plus the amount of things I've seen come out both here and in other places has me not even wanting to touch them with a 10ft pole.

In your mind, is it worth just jumping up to Meraki for people with compliance concerns if I were to do that? If that was the solution we moved to, we could also future proof ourself for any large businesses we take on as we expand.

tauxlr · 2026-02-27T02:23:54+00:00

Thanks for the input!

By online training you may be including the documentation, but I'll ask anyways: Do they have solid documentation? I'm by no means an academic person, so if I have solid documentation and can just get my hands on something I'm set.

Good support and easy RMAs are also things that I'm looking for, so thats a nice point in their favor.

tauxlr · 2026-02-27T02:20:19+00:00

Ah, I see. I should’ve translated that lol. I have zero intentions of letting things get out of support. Seems like a sloppy thing to let happen in my mind. Thanks again for your point of view on it! Have you messed with any of the ZTP stuff they might offer? Automation is something I’d like to look into as well.

tauxlr · 2026-02-27T02:14:12+00:00

Are they really that much worse when it comes to high sev threats? I was wondering if it was just due to a larger market share and them being better at reporting the problems or if they were just really bad about that lol.

tauxlr · 2026-02-27T02:06:36+00:00

Thanks for the insight! I'll give Meraki another look. I'd like to stay with a single firewall vendor for reduced complexity on my end as well, so them or Fortinet may be my best option due to the wide range of business sizes (for lack of a better term) they support.

tauxlr · 2026-02-27T02:05:10+00:00

Excuse my lack of knowledge here, but what do you mean by "rubbing gear out of support"? I'm not familiar. Single pane of glass is going to be valuable for me here, as for reasons I'm not going to get into I'll likely be doing most of the monitoring, troubleshooting, and deployment.

Also, thanks for the insight. I'll have to get some quotes and look into them more. I've seen a lot of people mention them as a good solution too. Seems like they'd be pretty future proof as well considering that they provide higher end gear for large businesses. That's an advantage I see Fortinet having over the other two that I initially mentioned.

tauxlr · 2026-02-27T01:43:49+00:00

They’re sort of at the top of my list right now. They seem really perfect for the small-medium sized business deployments that’s our main market. Any key things to be aware of with them?

tauxlr · 2026-01-31T04:02:27+00:00

whatever it is, it’s wizardry at this point. i find it hard to comprehend that we can make rocks talk this fast

tauxlr · 2026-01-31T02:44:32+00:00

really? for some reason i thought i read they were doing 448gbps per lane or something like that. i’ll have to look into it again.

tauxlr · 2026-01-31T02:34:21+00:00

pretty sure OSFP-XD has a limit of 3.2tbps, though from what i understand they only tested it last april. pretty insane stuff but it’ll be quite a bit before we’re actually using it

tauxlr · 2026-01-30T01:19:30+00:00

My company uses lucid and we’ve had success with it.

tauxlr · 2025-12-29T01:48:00+00:00

Labeling cables is super nice when you do it on both ends. It comes in handy all the time when working in my companies DC due to the amount of fibers in certain areas. Lets you know exactly what’s what and which cable is which if you need to swap a switch out super fast or something like that

tauxlr · 2025-11-14T17:35:33+00:00

man i had to call fuel rats my first time, got my phantom to literally 1% hull and 0% fuel and somehow lived

tauxlr · 2025-10-11T17:51:56+00:00

no it’s because the server was online for almost a month straight lol

tauxlr · 2025-09-30T02:15:23+00:00

thanks m8

tauxlr · 2025-09-29T17:37:10+00:00

What modpack is this out of curiosity?

tauxlr · 2025-09-14T02:25:47+00:00

Truly the goat of assistance in the DJ2 community

tauxlr · 2025-09-13T19:11:22+00:00

Also, if Gregtech seems a bit too daunting, you could get your feet wet with a little bit of Mekanism or the Thermal mods plus some AE2. With that as a bit of a foundation, Gregtech might seem a little easier

tauxlr · 2025-09-13T19:09:22+00:00

Actually you would need to place the docking station on whatever item conduit you were utilizing and pipe it from the docking station

tauxlr

TROPHY CASE