I've got an old Netgear JFS524 10/100M switch, which is very old and 100MB is not good enough for my ESXi server. But I want to full GB on my switches. Currently I'm looking GB switches around £70-100. I've found this...
You could install Sophos On a Spear PC. But, if you don't want to, its up to you really. But the specs on the Lanner FW-7584 Is amazing! An i7 and 16gb ddr3.
I've tested Untangle and pfSense. IMO they are great products, they provide great services. But my colleagues recommended Sophos for me. I tested it, and it worked out for me.
They Also provide Support for Sophos. Which is here:
https://www.astaro.org/
I was looking for a firewall protection for my network. I stumbled across Sophos and I kind of wanted to test it, It's actually very good. You get 3 years License which is good. :)
I Took it out from a Dell PE R200
http://ark.intel.com/products/34694/Intel-Xeon-Processor-E3110-6M-Cache-3_00-GHz-1333-MHz-FSB
It's pretty much an intel E8400.
I had a Dell Optiplex 760 laying around Running EXSi 5.5. Installed 3 VMs. Specs: Intel Xeon E3110 3GHz 8GB RAM 250 GB HDD ( I might add an external Drive)
Each VM has 3 GB RAM, 1 virtual CPU and 2 cores.
Windows 2008 R2 Standard Running Exchange 40GB for OS 30GB for Mail Boxes
Windows 2008...
No, These Switch are the best for CCNA Studies, All you need is couple of 2600xm series routers with wic-1t serial wan cards and DCE AND DTE cable. You can get them for £40-60 from eBay, if you're living in the UK. And you've got a Cisco 3550 switch, L3 you can do Inter-vlaning.