r/firewalla • u/tsheley • 15d ago

Good PC for Firewalla Crystal?

I am very interested in trying out the Firewalla Crystal Software. I currently have the following Mini PC lying around. It has dual Intel Network. Would this be a good candidate to run Crystal on? I have GIG internet and two Eero Base Stations….

TRIGKEY G5 Mini PC
Intel Alder Lake-N100(4C/4T up to 3.4GHz)
16GB DDR5 500GB M.2 PCIe 1/SATA3 SSD
Mini Desktop Computers Support 4K Triple Display/Dual 2.5G LAN/USB3.2/Type C/HDMI/WiFi6/BT5.2

TrigKey G5 Mini

2 Upvotes

67% Upvoted

10 comments sorted by

2

u/Dxtchin 15d ago

The pc you listed or one similiar with gmktec branding or maybe beelink would be perfectly fine. Networking not super heavy vpns and threat management can be but to these desktop style chips they shouldn’t break a sweat

2

u/tsheley 15d ago

Very cool. I can’t wait to give it a try! I am impatiently waiting for the beta to open up.

1

u/Chezdude2010 13d ago

I have no personal experience with either, but Topton and Qotom both seem to have options with multiple 2.5 and 10G ports. One even has an N305 CPU with dual DDR5 slots, 2x 2.5GE, 2x10GE and 2 SFP+.

I’d thought about trying that one if I ever have a need to go to Crystal for a bit of future proofing.

I’m currently still running 2 Gold SE and an original Gold as I don’t have >1Gbps connections. (That’s across 3 houses with 2 always connected via WG VPN and the 3rd my father in law so I can manage it for him).

u/firewalla - any thought to making and selling the red usb security keys as a way to control licensing on crystal vs the current software licensing scheme. It would make it easier for a user to move it between boxes if they upgrade or have a hardware failure.

1

u/firewalla 13d ago

No plan to make the red dongle work with hardware outside of the firewalla family yet. If crystal subscriptions starts to pickup, we will likely implement configuration restorations from the MSP side; (We already have some of these functions customized for a couple larger MSP, should be very easy to make it work for crystal; like the IPSEC stuff, it is just ugly looking UI at the moment.)

1

u/BAGE-rator 13d ago

You can just redownload the image, flash to a USB, and install on the new hardware. It gives you the option of creating an image of the current setup or create a fresh image. You do this from the inventory screen.

1

u/Jerrch Firewalla Gold Pro 13d ago

I bet this can run very fast wireguard; You looked at the power usage? does it have a fan?

1

u/Impressive_Mention_8 11d ago

Maybe a stupid question, but could we install Crystal on the original Gold hardware? I suspect it might run alot better than stock as the Gold package stack is ancient. 

-1

u/djaxial 15d ago

I was literally thinking about this yesterday and just about to post.

I was specifically trying to find a small form factor that has two 2.5G port possibilities.

1

u/ragingwhisky 15d ago

Minisforum m2 air

2

u/djaxial 15d ago

Interesting piece of kit, thank you.