Product reviewsWatchguard Xtm 5 Series (510 Model), Firewall Security Appliance NC2AE8

Outstanding! pfSense UTM firewall platform for $100~120. Unlimited license in 20 minute reinstall.

Ideal chassis to load pfSense for a solid UTM firewall. Open source pf Sense is very highly rated with full support from Austin Texas, however the hardware choices were limited to Net gate, equivalent overseas clone or build your own box from a pc. There are several advantages in addition to the SIX Intel 100/1000Gb ports.

Watch guard uses the Lanier OEM rack chassis with an industrial circuit board. The bios is locked for running a firewall, and frankly there is zero need to tamper with the bios if you are looking for a clean firewall solution.

XTM 5xx Series are all built upon the same NC2AEB chassis. Features an Intel 440 Celeron 64 bit CPU, 1 GB 800MHz DDR2 Non-ECC DIMM Desktop Memory and Compact Flash (CF) solid state micro drive. All you need to change is CF card and install two 2GB ram sticks. pf Sense has the driver configured to operate the LCD display and buttons.

The upgrade procedure is straight forward:

1. Get 4GB Sandisk Extereme CF card rated 60/Mb or higher. Support posts indicate Transcend is not a good choice.

2. On pf sense org site, download the 4GB 64bit nano image and burn it to the micro drive. On Linux and Mac you can use the dd command. For those stuck in Microsoft there are several outside options if you google "burn ISO image". Considering Microsoft started in Unix/Xenix, then CP/M then resellers of DR-DOS before creating knock-offs, it's sad how far they let their users down on continual basis. Remember just copying the image file does not make it boot. pf Sense runs on free BSD embedded unix operating system.

3. Remove the 3 lid screws located along the upper edge on the rear of the chassis. One in each corner, plus the center screw is located in the middle underneath the white "warranty void if removed" sticker. - Be careful not to pull or push on the plastic face plate. If any of the face plate tabs are broken a little super glue will solve the problem. I used a sliver of thin food box card board, to be a glued in wedge for one of the bent plastic tabs. Then trimmed the excess so it cant be seen unless you look closely from inside the chassis.

4. Remove the original 1GB CF card by sliding out. Now carefully slide in the Sandisk 4GB card you imaged to boot BSD in Step 2.

5. Looking from the front panel toward the rear, on the left side in the chassis is the hardware accelerator card. About 2x5 inches in size with a 1 inch square chip with silver coin looking circle on top, and female bus adapter. It's not supported so you can remove it to reduce wasted power. Just undo the four screws in the corners. To prevent future mistakes i wrote on the chassis "Converted to pf Sense 2015, Dave Cannon" with a sharpie in the space the accelerator board occupied.

6. Remove the original 1GB dimm memory stick. Replace with two 2GB 800 Mhz non-ecc dimm memory sticks for INTEL desktop. Avoid the AMD only chips. I bought a pair of 2X2GB for INTEL on eBay for $13 which worked fine. I didn't try using 2x4GB sticks - but if you do please let me know if/how it worked.

7. Clean out the remaining dust with a small brush and vacuum while being careful NOT to suck up any of the circuit board jumpers. Never let the dust build up, if you overheat the tiny chips it will burn up the unit way ahead of normal life.

8. Connect a console port using a null-modem serial cable with port settings of Speed=115200, Data Bits= 8, Parity Bits= None, Stop Bits= 1. We run a high tech hip shop with Mac (BSD) which the hot girls in our office like & Linux servers at colo data center. So either buy a cool adapter, or build your own. Looks really do matter if you want to be more successful. For Mac you will need a apple USB to serial adapter. Windows hyper-terminal does not work. If you are stranded in microsoft userland then go with Putty, it works fine to connect.

9. Boot up your cool pfSense firewall.

Several free videos on youtube and the online docs at pf sense site will take you the rest of the way. The pf sense GUI is very good. With 4GB of ram you should be able to run the cool Unified Threat Management features.

Semper fidelis,
David L. CannonRead full review...

Verified purchase:  Yes | Condition: pre-owned | Sold by: raa.us.kdhw0au0z4