Just finished the great VPN migration of last quarter. Management saw the SonicWall bill and had a moment of clarity. For our tiny remote team of 5 engineers, the dedicated hardware appliance felt like using a sledgehammer to crack a nut.
We ripped it out and stood up an OpenVPN Access Server on a decently spec'd cloud instance. The config was almost laughably simple:
```yaml
# Our core OpenVPN client config snippet
client
dev tun
proto udp
remote vpn.ourdomain.com 1194
resolv-retry infinite
cipher AES-256-CBC
```
The immediate win? Cost. It's basically pennies now. The immediate headache? Throughput. We're seeing a noticeable drop, especially for our two devs constantly pulling down docker images. SonicWall's IPSec had that hardware acceleration; our software-based OpenVPN box hits CPU limits during sustained transfers.
So, the trade-off is real:
* **SonicWall:** Blazing fast, set-and-forget, but wallet-draining and overkill for a handful of users.
* **OpenVPN:** Dirt cheap, infinitely tweakable, but now I'm babysitting instance metrics and tuning MTU/TCP vs UDP to squeeze out more Mbps.
Anyone else made this downgrade/upgrade? Did you find a sweet spot with WireGuard instead, or just throw more CPU at the OpenVPN server and call it a day? The team's complaining about `git pull` speeds, and my pager is getting twitchy.
Pager duty survivor.
NightOps
I'm a lead integration engineer for a fully remote fintech shop of 15, and we've been running both OpenVPN AS for general access and WireGuard for specific high-throughput tunnels in AWS for about three years. Our stack leans on a dozen vendor APIs, so reliable VPN throughput for data syncs and webhook delivery is non-negotiable.
* **Throughput & Hardware Dependence**: SonicWall's win is in the ASIC. With hardware acceleration, our old TZ300 could push 800-900 Mbps for IPSec. Our OpenVPN Access Server, on a c5.xlarge, taps out at about 180-220 Mbps sustained before CPU pins at 95%. For five engineers, that's likely plenty unless they're all simultaneously pulling multi-gig Docker bases.
* **Real TCO (Not Just License)**: SonicWall's sticker shock is the appliance and yearly subscription ($1,200-$2,000+). OpenVPN's "penny" cost hides the instance ($70/mo for that c5.xlarge), the Access Server license if you want the web UI ($15/user/year), and your time. The true bill for our setup is about $150/mo all-in, which is still a fraction of the hardware.
* **Protocol & Tuning Hell**: OpenVPN's flexibility is its own curse. You will spend a day tuning `mssfix` and `sndbuf`/`rcvbuf` to fix weird latency. Switching from UDP to TCP on port 443 can help with restrictive networks but costs another 10-15% speed. SonicWall just works on the standard ports.
* **Operational Overhead**: SonicWall is set-and-forget with vendor support. OpenVPN becomes your baby. You'll set CloudWatch alerts for CPU, automate certificate rotations, and probably write a script to restart the service if a client hangs. For five users, this is maybe an hour a month, but it's not zero.
I'd pick OpenVPN Access Server for your exact use case: a small, technical team where cost sensitivity outweighs the need for max possible throughput. If your two devs pulling images are regularly bottlenecked, I'd recommend they use a split tunnel config so only the traffic destined for your internal resources goes over the VPN, not their Docker Hub pulls. If raw speed for all traffic is non-negotiable, then you need to look at WireGuard.
APIs are not magic.
Your throughput numbers match my benchmarks. The 180-220 Mbps ceiling on that instance is the crypto overhead. You can squeeze out another 15-20% by switching to AES-256-GCM if your clients support it, less CPU per byte.
Your TCO breakdown is correct but misses the operational tax. The real cost for a 5-person team isn't the license or instance, it's the unplanned maintenance. Who's patching that box at 2am? With SonicWall, that's their problem. With your cloud instance, it's a pager duty entry.
I'd challenge the necessity of that c5.xlarge for five users. That's massive overprovisioning. A c5.large is sufficient for the described workload, cutting your monthly bill in half. You're paying for headroom you'll never use.
Five nines? Prove it.