Been running running pfsense for YEARS under esxi.. Never had a problem with it. Even before freebsd added native drivers for the vmx3 virtual nics, etc.  Before that under old vmware server version 1 and 2.. And even on virtualbox for a tinybit, etc.

I would stay away from usb nics to be honest.  With vlans and smart switch you could get away with 1 nic on your esxi host.  But better the more nics you have available in your esxi host, etc.

RESOLVED*****

Upgraded MS-Server 2012 to MS-Server2012R2 and everything now works as expected.

I have attempted to update a few MS-Server2012 Hyper-V PFSense firewalls and all have failed.

I will now update all HOST OS to 2012 R2.

https://doc.pfsense.org/index.php/Connectivity_Troubleshooting

It could be lots of things.

UPDATE
I upgraded from 2.3.2 to 2.3.4 and I still have vtnet interfaces (and full speed).
Now I am trying to go up to 2.4.1 and check if it still works.

I will keep you posted (if someone will ever read this post  ;) )

EDIT:
Upgrading to 2.4.1 kept the virtnet driver.
So it seems the issue is present only when starting from 2.4 ISO… meh.

EDIT2:
Found the culprit: when I create a VM on cloudstack I can choose the "OS Type" and I choose a generic "FreeBSD (64 bit)". The 2.3.2 instead was created with OS Type = FreeBSD 10 (64 bit). It seems that does the difference... two days lost, lesson learnt :)

Anybody have any ideas? Or can anyone even confirm the behavior I'm seeing is expected? (i.e. tcpdump -i <int>host <carp-neighbor>– and look for ping/response to from that member on the primary firewall)

I've gone as far as to damn near tear out my entire networking stack in esxi... Still the problem persists. I've upgraded to the latest patch levels, VM hardware levels, etc... I've tried manually setting MAC Addresses. Nothing working.  My next step is to try swapping E100E interfaces for VMXNET3 ones...

But I'd love to at least know if I'm completely wasting my time.

EXTMember1      EXTMember2
        \                      /
          \                  /
              \            /
                \        /
                    VIP
                    |
                    |
                    VIP
                  /     
                /         
              /           
              / <------    \        -------- Traffic from INT Member 2 to EXT Gateway is seen on this interface
INT Member1        INT Member 2</carp-neighbor></int>

Your pfSense has internet access? You can verify this at the dashboard in the Version section. If it is able to search for updates, it has access to the internet.

If pfSense has internet access, do your LAN rules also allow access to the clients?

Yes! I even reinstalled both of the hosts (and their datastores)!

Even on 2.4.0 the issue still persists!

@heper:

I see no need to automatically add packages.

Those who want to use it, can install it from GUI

I agree. If someone needs/wants it, it only takes a few clicks to install. Someone may not have connectivity to the Internet when they spin up a VM so automatically fetching a package could fail.

What is the vSwitch topology for LAN port group? I am guessing that it is used for VM connections. You need to assign a VMkernel portgroup for management.

Not sure if this helps, since I'm not using COMCAST. However, I'm running multiple instances of pfsense on a hyper-v server. My configuration has one NIC dedicated to the WAN. This NIC is connected to a virtual switch and the various instances of pfsense are connected to the virtual switch. The configuration is similar on the LAN side. The NIC that I'm using for the WAN is an Intel i350. I have not changed any settings on the NIC. My internet connection is VDSL and the modem is an Actiontec T3200M.

Try

and reboot.

Can confirm, it appeared that the EC2/Apple ipsec capabilities were offered. The 'official' vmware image that is behind a 100$ annual subscription is literally just the CE image.

I'm hoping this is a mistake.

Thanks for your reply.

I upgraded the server to 2012 r2 today and it works perfectly. All 6 nics recognised and working.