Due to the nature of packet analysis and granular drill-down reporting features, Sensei requires more horsepower than a standard L3-L4 firewall.
Sensei requires at least 2 GB of memory. Installer will not continue if you have less than 2 GB of RAM. We recommend 4 GB memory if you want to be on the safer side.
With Sensei 1.5 release, you can offload your reporting database to an external system. This allows you to be able to run Sensei on systems with restrained amount of RAM (e.g. <= 1GB)
It is also a good idea to check if your ethernet adapter is playing well with netmap.
CPU & Memory
Because the analytics module relies on Elastic Search to do Big Data processing, amount of the memory available in the system is crucial for the performance of the whole product.
At least dual-core (i3 and equivalent) or preferably quad-core modern CPU (i5 and equivalent) would be advisable.
If the number of devices are more than 250 and WAN bandwidth is higher than 100 Mbps we do not recommend deploying as a virtual guest, since resources in virtual environments are generally shared between guest systems.
Recommended minimum hardware requirements for Sensei based on the number of devices and the bandwidth:
|
# Devices (*) |
Max WAN Bandwith |
Min. Memory |
Minimum CPU |
|
0 - 25 |
50 Mbps |
4 GB |
A Dual-core CPU (x86_64 compatible, single core passmark score of 200) Note: Deciso A10s and AMD G-SERIES SOC GX Series are compatible |
|
25-50 |
150 Mbps |
4 GB |
Intel Dual-Core i3 2.0 GHz (2 Cores, 4 Threads) or equivalent |
|
50-100 |
200 Mbps |
8 GB |
Intel Dual-Core i5 2.2 GHz (2 Cores, 4 Threads) or equivalent |
|
100-250 |
300 Mbps |
16 GB |
Intel Dual-Core i5 3.20 GHz (2 Cores, 4 Threads) or equivalent |
|
250-1000 |
500 Mbps |
32 GB |
Intel Quad-Core i7 3.40 GHz (4 Cores, 8 Threads) or equivalent |
Ethernet Adapter
Sensei uses a FreeBSD subsystem called netmap(4) to access raw Ethernet frames off the wire. As of FreeBSD 11 (OPNsense version <= 20.1) this software is a bit picky in terms of proper driver compatibility.
Intel based adapters, particularly em(4) and igb(4) are observed to perform well in terms of stability and performance.
Sunny Valley Networks is sponsoring developments on this project so, you can expect netmap(4) will be better in being able to support a wide range of Ethernet drivers.