Okay, I know that title is going to get some heat, but hear me out. I've been trying to evaluate a firewall solution for my small MSP side-hustle, where I manage networks for about five different small business clients. I thought pfSense or OPNsense would be perfect—open source, powerful, no per-endpoint licensing.
But when I actually tried to set up a box for testing multi-tenant stuff... it felt like I was trying to use a Swiss Army knife to build a house. The tools are *there*, but the workflow is brutal.
My main issues so far:
* **Separate admin logins/views:** From what I can see, you can create admin users, but they see the *whole* system. There's no true tenant isolation where Client A's admin only sees their VLANs, rules, and logs. I've read about complex workarounds involving multiple instances or VLANs, but that seems messy.
* **Centralized management:** If I deploy a box at each client, I'd have to log into each one individually for updates or config changes. There's no single pane of glass, which feels like a step back from even some mid-tier commercial offerings.
* **Audit trails:** If I do give a client limited access, the logging seems geared toward system events, not clearly tracking which tenant admin changed a specific firewall rule.
Am I missing something? Is there a plugin or a specific configuration path that makes this actually tenable? I love the idea of these projects, but for my use case—where I need clear separation and centralized oversight—it's starting to feel like the DIY approach might cost more in my time than just paying for a FortiGate or something similar with proper multi-tenant features.
Curious if anyone else has tried to use these in a multi-admin/multi-tenant scenario and made it work smoothly. Or did you also hit a wall and switch?