Important note about SSL VPN compatibility for 20.0 MR1 with EoL SFOS versions and UTM9 OS. Learn more in the release notes.

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What hypervisor would you use to install Sophos Home?

There have been a lot of posts in the forum about hardware compatible with Sophos Home and related posts about getting Sophos Home to run on XGS hardware (which is currently not possible). I asked what the future of Sophos Home was here, What is the future of Sophos Home License? and the response seemed to be "don't expect any changes soon but running it under a hypervisor will address most issues".

Clearly setting up a hypervisor adds a significant amount of complexity to a Sophos Home setup. I don't actually need this myself but thought it would be an interesting 'project' and something I may write up and post here for anybody else who needs it. The aim is to ultimately created an unattended install package so it can be deployed on hardware without a video card if needed.

With this in mind, I'm interested in what suggestions people have for a hypervisor.

My experience with operating systems is nearly all with Windows but I can (slowly) find my way around Linux when I have to. We run a couple of Ubuntu VMs for specific applications.

  • My criteria (please feel to add to this)
  • It has to be free
  • It has to have a wide range of hardware support
  • It should have a long term future
  • I have to be able to script it for unattended install
  • It would help if it is popular (more online resources)

I have ruled out Windows Hyper-V Server because 2019 is the last version they are going to make available. There is no Hyper-V Server 2022. My initial inclination is to go for VMware ESXi as it seems to fulfil all my requirements, and as a dedicated lightweight hypervisor, seems an obvious choice. I realise I could add KVM to my preferred Linux but as I don't consider myself knowledgeable with any version of Linux, there doesn't seem to be any advantage to that.

Does ESXi seem a good choice? Does anybody think there is something better?



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  • Then you need to buy an MS server licence to run it, most home users could not justify an MS server. Running hyper-v on a w10/11 is a security oxymoron except for testing purposes.

    Ian

    XG115W - v20.0.2 MR-2 - Home

    XG on VM 8 - v21 GA

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  • Then you need to buy an MS server licence to run it, most home users could not justify an MS server. Running hyper-v on a w10/11 is a security oxymoron except for testing purposes.

    There are extreme measures one would have to take to keep it secure which would require stripping the OS by disabling most of the services and installing a HIPS and a very strong application firewall such as Comodo Internet Security for granular control of what the OS can do. Unfortunately many of the windows defender features interfere with other security products and prevent them from running.