Proxmox Sophos XG VM
Sophos XG Home (free edition) runs well in Proxmox. The free edition is limited to 4 CPU cores and 6GB RAM. It can run a full load of web proxy, IDS/IPS, etc.
Sophos on Proxmox can be installed using the traditional ISO image or using the VM (qcow2) image. The ISO option is preferred as Proxmox raw disks are faster than qcow2 images.
There is no functionality difference between installing via ISO vs using the qcow2 cloud image.
Proxmox VM Config for Sophos XG
root@pve:~# qm config 999
balloon: 0
boot: order=scsi0
cores: 4
cpu: host
machine: q35
memory: 6144
meta: creation-qemu=8.1.5,ctime=1708257281
name: sophos-xg
net0: virtio=BC:24:11:49:23:55,bridge=vmbr0
net1: virtio=BC:24:11:56:FA:D4,bridge=vmbr0
numa: 0
ostype: l26
scsi0: local-zfs:vm-999-disk-0,discard=on,iothread=1,size=64G,ssd=1
scsihw: virtio-scsi-single
smbios1: uuid=25582ed2-f66d-4d48-98a8-188530dd7612
sockets: 1
vmgenid: 620e5244-86e1-451e-86e9-250d3d56f1f0Notes:
- Do not enable qemu guest tools as Sophos does not support it. The VM works fine without guest tools anyway.
- Single CPU socket with 4 cores is best.
- Present multiple NICs to the Sophos XG VM. Configure Proxmox use different VLANs in the same bridge. Do not pass VLANs to Sophos XG unless absolutely required.
#TODO: check if VM disk 64GB is sufficient for production usage. Test and increase to 128GB if required.
#TODO: for Proxmox host with single NIC, document how to use VLAN tags and a managed switch to provide multiple independent ports to Sophos VM (LAN, WAN, DMZ, etc).