Hello! adomin1000 said: Does anyone have any recommendations on hardware to use and to avoid? I recommend you run Sophos Firewall as a VM. (You can use Proxmox for this.) Since the Home License is limited to 4 Cores, I recommend you get the fastest processor you can - also look for a CPU with high single core performance. adomin1000 said: Preferably still have capacity to upgrade CPU and increase RAM if I outgrow the Home Edition limitations. You can check AliExpress, but most of those mini-pc with multiple NIC's have the CPU soldered on the motherboard, the only thing you can change and add is memory and disks. adomin1000 said: Does the home edition count virtual cores (threads) on a CPU towards the 4 core limit? YES, if you get a 4C/8T, you will be limited to "4 Threads". That's why I recommend you run the Firewall as a VM. By doing this you also won't have to worry about driver combability. A note, the I219, I225-V and I226-V Intel NIC's are incompatible if you're running Sophos Firewall on bare-metal. If you use Proxmox and Virtio NIC's there won't be any issues, then. adomin1000 said: Is it possible to get Gigabit and higher speed throughput with the home edition hardware limitations Depends on the CPU, but you can reach even 10 Gbit/s with the Home License with the right hardware and configuration. The only thing that's hard on CPU is TLS Decryption, but a fast single core processor is easily able to push ~900 Mbit/s of TLS Decryption + AppCtrl + IPS with a single core. (The underlying DPI system of the Firewall can't load balance a single connection with multiple cores, but since almost everything nowadays utilizes multiple connections, you won't have to worry about this. adomin1000 said: Is it recommended to install bare metal on a device or to virtualize? Virtualize, not only you won't have any driver issues, but you will be able to do neat things such as snapshots and backups easily. adomin1000 said: Not necessarily a hardware question, but if I built on the config on a virtual installation, can I restore the config on a bare-metal device? As long as the bare-metal have the same number of interfaces than the virtual installation and It's on a compatible release, then yes you can restore the config as expected. Thanks! Answer from Prism on community.sophos.com