Seeking 1U Rackmount Hardware for VPN Client, using pfsense firewall to replace my exisitng Peplink router. (300Mbps OpenVPN / 600Mbps Wireguard)

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Hey everyone,

I’m on the hunt for a hardware appliance that fits in a 1U rackmount setup, comes with 6+ ports, and can handle around 300Mbps on OpenVPN or 600Mbps on WireGuard as a client. I’d love to hear your experiences and recommendations regarding brands, models, or any DIY solutions that have worked well in real-world scenarios.

Budget: under $500 including everything.

What’s been your experience with performance and reliability in similar setups? Are there any potential pitfalls I should be aware of when selecting hardware for these throughput requirements?

Thanks in advance for your insights!

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How many users on your VPN at the same time? If less than 20, most generic hardware will do.

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I just bought a “Qotom 5X 2.5G LAN 2 SFP+ Barebone Mini Router Q20322G9 with C3558 1U Rackmount Mini Server” as sold on Amazon and shipped from China. The unit arrived 8 days after ordering. I’m pleased. I installed my own RAM and storage.

Details at gw01 – Dan Langille's Other Diary

Photos at gw01 – setup photos – very little commentary – Dan Langille's Other Diary

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I picked up a Dell PowerEdge R630 for $178 including ship+taxes from an eBay seller:

You may need to buy a second NIC PCIe card (because it only has 1 quad port daughter card) if you went this route and some rails/power cords.

I plan to install Proxmox and then pfsense in a Virtual Machine. Bridge the ports with vmbr.
Dual Xeon processors E5 V4 series and DDR4 RAM.

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Just 3 to 5 people, mostly streaming as far as bandwidth. At most maybe 10 to 15 around 5 to 10 times a year.

Edit: I was looking at this since it seems highly recommended:

https://www.reddit.com/r/PFSENSE/comments/163z370/new_qotom_q1055ge_model_june_2023/

But I don’t think that CPU can push 300Mbps openvpn or Wirdguard can it?

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I forgot it doesn’t come with 2 PSUs but you can pick up another pretty cheap on eBay

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WireGuard is very light on the CPU. I think it can, But I cannot swear it.

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I haven’t done any testing of course because I’ll have to set it all up but I plan to setup VPN on it and can test it.

Edit: You could just run pfsense bare metal but that is up to you. My opinion is that it would be a waste of all those resources.

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no much options it seems.