First of all scalability of this solution. It's an all-in-one solution useful for every kind of company. It's also very easy to set up rules and NAT, and it has several modules like transparent proxy, VPN, and traffic shaping which are the daily modules for me.
pfSense software was designed to be a customizable platform that can be hardware agnostic. This allows the engineer to meet the needs of a project with a device that's got the right I/O and specifications, and then customize the pfSense settings to their needs.
So power consumption and less hardware requirement can save our money!
Compatibility with virtualization system (like VMWare, Proxmox and so on and so forth); in some cases, it can create conflicts with virtualized hardware, and configuration export (sometimes the XML file creates a conflict with the hardware network MAC address).
I've been using it for three years.
Never had any issues. In fact, I've had a pfSense firewall with the uptime of a year.
No, and it doesn't matter how many rules or not that you have. It can manage different network interfaces (virtual and physical) without a problem.
We never use it, but it has a large community so you can find whatever you need in the pfSense forum.
Technical Support:We never use it, but it has a large community so you can find whatever you need in the pfSense forum.
Previously we've used hardware firewalling solutions like SonicWall, Zyxel and others but they're not powerful like this solution. Also, they are hardware so the cost is much higher than software. I've also used IPtables which is a software Linux solution but it's complicated to setup when you need to manage several rules.
It's easy to setup the solution because there's a wizard that guides you through it, and therefore, you cannot make mistakes. Then, you can configure the different aspects to fit your needs.
We have become experts in this solution. We installed it in our lab and tested the solution. After that we implemented it throughout our company, and then began using the solution with our customers.
We've a strong know how, and we've use this solution with our customers so we can be more competitive than hardware solutions.
It's a software solution, and also open source, so it's cost is zero!
We tested IPCop, Smoothwall, IPTables and others. When we have an OS project, we want to test so we can compare it to our technology, and if it's better, we build it!
Test, test, test and...test! It's powerful but only with testing will you realize what you need.
It has provided us with a low cost security solution using a quality router at a fraction of the cost of our previous solution.
I've used it for eight years.
Rarely as long as the right precautions are taken during migration.
Sometimes there are issues with package deployment and one must refer to the forums for support.
Being open source, scalability is not limited. The limits in place, are only set by available resources and time.
Customer service is available at a rate of $399 for 2 incidents, $899 for 5 incidents and $1,699 for 10 incidents. Most people refer to the forum and/or chat room.
Technical Support:Over 10/10.
Yes, I have used many other routers but nothing offers the options pfSense does without spending a fortune. pfSense is constantly being improved on.
I switched due to router limitations and vulnerabilities.
It's straight forward for anyone that's installed an OS before, however, I wouldn't recommend it for the novice.
It has been implemented in house and at client locations. If implemented at client locations it does require some care if Snort (The proximity security system) is used as it needs to be fine tuned and touched up from time to time due to newly found vulnerabilities that cause legitimate sites to be blocked.
You can invest as little or as much as you want. Granted, some features require more hardware than others but some end users use old machines that no longer have a purpose.
It's between US$50 to US$1500 depending on the hardware that is used.
We also looked at -
Become familiar with the router before implementing it at customer sites. Realize that basic features require a basic amount of hardware. Advanced features require more RAM and if using an SSD, use the embedded installer to reduce wear and tear on your drive.
I would recommend having the following hardware as a minimum:
Indeed this is a very powerful opensource solution but as you say it requires some technical expertise and tweaking (but actually which firewall technology does not require some now?). Fortunately the community and project documentation are rich and very helpful. Extra packages availability is also rich, it goes from the simple CLI tool like bmon to fully graphically managed RADIUS, SQUID, SNORT servers for instance (see : doc.pfsense.org). It also support natively High Availability Sync thanks to CARP and pfsync protocols (see: doc.pfsense.org). Few days ago I set up VPN SSL configuration with OpenVpn in TAP mode, all done through the GUI (no need to edit any files through CLI) what quite impressed me (usually bridge creation is done through CLI).
To conclude I really invite people looking for a free firewall solution to give a try with pfsense :-)
Just keep in mind such a solution is devoted to projects requiring "not so much speed", I mean 40G or even 100G firewalling and either not UTM inspection.