Hardware Requirements
This section provides information on hardware requirements for running Untangle.
Hardware Requirements
- Untangle must be installed onto a dedicated machine with at least two NICs.
- Untangle installs to the hard drive of a PC, erasing all data on that drive in the process. Please be aware of this before starting the installation.
Purchasing an Untangle Appliance
You can purchase a server directly from Untangle pre-installed with our software. Please see our appliances page for more information.
Verified Hardware
There are also a select few consumer routers that are supported off-the-shelf. See the Firmware page for more information.
Using your own Hardware
One of the great things about Untangle is that we're software based, meaning you can install it to any desktop or server PC that fits the bill. When putting together an Untangle server you must account for several variables - the hardware you're installing onto, the number of users as well as the workload of those users. The table below provides some recommended hardware specs by network size.
Please remember that these are only guidelines: each network is different, each user is different, each configuration is different.
Hardware Recommendations Table
| Resource | Processor | Memory | Hard Drive | NICs | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1-50 devices | Atom/P4 equivalent or greater | 2 GB | 80 GB | 2 or more | |
| 51-150 devices | Dual Core | 2 or more GB | 160 GB | 2 or more | |
| 151-500 devices | 2 or more Cores | 2 or more GB | 500+ GB | 2 or more | |
| 501-1500 devices | 4 Cores | 4 or more GB | 500+ GB | 2 or more | 64-bit |
| 1501-5000 devices | 4 or more Cores | 4 or more GB | 500+ GB | 2 or more | 64-bit |
Hardware Compatibility
If you are using Untangle on your own hardware you will need to do the research to determine if the hardware is compatible. Generally speaking, if a particular piece of hardware is known to work well in recent versions of Linux then it has a good chance of working with Untangle.
To know for sure, you will need to order the equipment and install NGFW on it. If it works - it is compatible. If it does not work, you can try tweaking BIOS settings and possibly swapping parts and/or monitor and disk configurations. If it still does not work, the hardware is likely incompatible.
For users that do not want to go through this process, buying an appliance is suggested as that is the only hardware we can guarantee will work and the only hardware we support.
We do not suggest USB NICs. In our experience they perform poorly and are not reliable.
