Hardware and virtualization
FreeSense supports amd64 with UEFI or legacy BIOS. The 1.1 Development line also has an experimental ARM64 target for standards-compliant generic UEFI systems, plus separate Raspberry Pi 4B and Pi 5 D0 preview appliances. The generic target uses virtio storage and networking; it does not imply SBC compatibility. Treat the firewall as an appliance: select hardware for the traffic, encryption, inspection, and log retention you actually enable rather than for the base install alone.
Starting profiles
Section titled “Starting profiles”| Profile | CPU | Memory | Storage | Network |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lab or light edge | 64-bit dual core | 4 GB | 16 GB SSD | 2 interfaces or VLAN-capable NIC |
| VPN and services | 4 cores | 8 GB | 32 GB SSD | Intel or well-supported multi-port NIC |
| Inspection and retention | 4+ cores | 16 GB+ | 64 GB+ SSD | NICs sized for sustained traffic |
Suricata, ntopng, pfBlockerNG feed processing, large log retention, and encrypted VPN throughput can move a system from the first profile into the third. The Package Manager labels packages as lightweight, moderate, or intensive to make that tradeoff visible before installation.
Interfaces
Section titled “Interfaces”An appliance normally uses a dedicated WAN and LAN interface. A single physical interface can be used for a lab or trunk design when the upstream switch carries VLANs, but that design requires a reliable management VLAN and careful recovery planning.
Use predictable, well-supported NICs. Before deploying remotely, test link state, VLAN tagging, offload behavior, and console access on the actual hardware.
Virtual machines
Section titled “Virtual machines”FreeSense can run as a virtual appliance when the hypervisor can present stable virtual NICs and serial or virtual-console access. Keep WAN and LAN on separate virtual networks, reserve resources for inspection workloads, and take a configuration backup before changing virtual switches.
Official QCOW2 and raw images are available with recommended UFS roots or ZFS boot environments for KVM-compatible platforms and bhyve. They use cloud-init metadata through a native FreeSense adapter and include the QEMU guest agent. See Cloud images for imports and the one-NIC management warning.
Install Open VM Tools only when the virtualization platform uses it. The package is part of the supported catalog and is documented as a guest-integration service, not as a firewall feature.
Next: install FreeSense.