Looking for some advice / recommendations / considerations on running OPNsense on bare metal vs virtualized, and if virtualized how best to do so.

I currently have OPNsense running bare metal on a Protectli FW6E Vault, with the following specs:

  • Intel i7-8550U CPU @ 1.80GHz
  • 120GB mSATA (1% utilization)
  • 16GB RAM (6.5% utilization)
  • 6 Gigabit Ethernet NIC ports

The Vault running OPNsense is the primary firewall and router, any wireless devices connect through a dumb AP running OpenWRT. Connected over Ethernet I have a RPi running HomeAssistant OS (would probably also move to virtual if that’s the chosen direction) as well as a TrueNAS setup.

How much of a performance hit would be expected running in some sort of container vs the current bare metal setup? Are there any other concerns with running the main firewall / router virtually vs bare metal to take into account?

  • immobile7801@piefed.socialEnglish
    4·
    10 hours ago

    I run opnsense in proxmox for a couple reasons. 1) I can snapshot the VM prior to upgrading, in case of an issue I can just rollback. 2) backups, I can backup the whole VM, which includes all the plugins, Not just the base opnsense config. 3) I don’t run anything on bare metal except my laptop.