I dealt with a lot of time sinks like this running on consumer hardware. I got a Dell R720 and those problems all went away. Now I have a power and cooling problem. :D
I run it on BSD and just use the pkg and never have any trouble. Clients are all in the Tumbleweed repos so are the latest which I think helps. Update, run occ update and it always works fine.
Ive been using exim, hardly a change to my config in many years.so there is almost no point in having a webui to config. Works great. Front end with pfsense and pfblocker, add spamassassin, it is very, very, very solid once you get over the initial configuration hump. Migrate by copying the config file to the new server.
Even if the virtualized router is down, I'll still have access to the physical server over the network until the DHCP lease expires. The switch does the work of delivering my packets on the LAN, not the router.
Yes, of course it depends on your network topology. If you have a link in the same subnet you're good (and can configure a static IP if need be). But if you're using vlans you can get in a pickle if the router is down. In my setup everything on the user side is segregated so if the router goes down I have to take a dedicated management laptop and plug into the host management network directly on the management switch where i keep a port empty. This maintains segregation and in practices means I take my ancient Acer Aspire One used for nothing else into the server room that looks strangely like a laundry room and plug it in.
It works great as long as you have a method to access the server directly when the router machine is down. A laptop set to a static IP on the same subnet will let you access the host when you b0rk something. Keep a backup config on that machine
It's pretty great though. Just remember pfsense won't support more than 7 external interfaces when you start getting crazy with vlans
Second Hamstudy app. Also it isnt super trivial but I heard there was a six year old that passed so YMMV
I found it a decent amount of work but nothing crazy. Join your local amateur radio club and they are usually awesome.
I dealt with a lot of time sinks like this running on consumer hardware. I got a Dell R720 and those problems all went away. Now I have a power and cooling problem. :D