Cool thanks for the pointer I will have another go.

Depending on what you have access to I would recommend hyper-v.  I used to use VMware but due to issues like expensive support and limitations with API on free version I decided to go with Hyper-V.  As a Microsoft partner I get unlimited free critical support from Microsoft.

There is also a free version if Altaro which you install ib the host And will give you up to 2 vm backups for free.

Also if you want with hyper-v 2012 you get free replication which is really nice!!!

Nothing wrong with that dashboard display.
However it does seem as though your other interface is being emulated as compatible with the amd le driver which is not great. You should try to make sure they all appear as Intel NICs or better that the hardware is actually passed through so they appear as the real NIC.

Steve

There's one every month. Not sure we'll revisit virtualization this year but the recording of the June 2014 session is available for gold subscribers in the members area.

You are having the shmem-offloading-bug. See https://forum.pfsense.org/index.php?topic=88467.0 (I actually spelled IMPORTANT all-caps in there for a reason :p hah. )

The commands you want for XenServer are the 'xe' commands. Don't reboot pfSense, but shutdown and freshly start the VM after updating the settings. You can use ethtool to test it without rebooting the VM.

that early in your boot shouldn't know.  Do you have serial disabled in the bios of the vm.  There have been some threads about serial interface causing some really slow boots.

When get a chance will try to duplicate this by bringing up a vm in hw 10 version, and then installing pfsense 32 bit.  And then trying to boot the cd after upgrading to hw 11.

hmm - will have to do something with a custom script to test.  Something simple that can validate works or doesnt work or if get same error, etc.

dude it works on 6 just fine..  But if you install the native tools and use vmx3 pfsense is not going to work unless you disable csumming at with ifconfig vmx? -rxcsum -txcsum -tso4 and this has to be done every boot.

Just install the openvm tools package in pfsense there you go done.

I can tell you for fact that these instructions work on getting the tools installed
http://www.v-front.de/2015/01/pfsense-22-was-released-how-to-install.html

This works on esxi 6, have done it many times on many different vms of psense..  But again if your wanting to use vmx3 nic in pfsense doing so will break pfsense from passing traffic.

Just switched back to e1000 interfaces from vmxnet 3 interfaces and now pfsense is seeing broadcasts including arps.

No its not recommended for security reasons.

Makes sense but I never remember that because my users couldn't crack a vending machine if you gave them a bag full of coins.

Found this… though it doesn't mention why exactly FreeBSD head fixes the issue: http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-net/2015-March/041801.html

Hello. I have no extra packages installed. Just a normal install to let it work like a router.
The log files I have to check.

I have also installed smoothwall as test and it doesn't have much troubles with speed test.net

Can you pls. then remove the following kernel modeuls in the open vm tools package:

vmmemctl.ko
vmxnet.ko
vmblock.ko
vmhgfs.ko

These files have a version mismatch on the console running Vsphere 4.1, 5.0, 5.5.

yes 2.1.5 with e1000 is faster on esxi … its odd because 2.2 series have this multithreaded pf and all.

i'm thinking there are serious performance tweaks to be made to get more out of it .... but i wouldn't know how/where to start looking for tweaks.
it would be cool if the devs would put some stuff on the wiki to get more performance out of esxi

Not the answer i was hoping for, because this is Xen as part of unraid i will need to wait until the next release of unraid. It's working on 2.1.4 of pFsense so i will stay with that until this is sorted.

Thanks for the feedback.

@johnpoz:

The easy way not to confuse the interfaces is just look at the mac for the nic in esxi.. I just set them so I know what they are ;)

[2.2.1-RELEASE][root@pfSense.local.lan]/root: ifconfig | grep ether
        ether 00:50:56:00:00:01
        ether 00:50:56:00:00:02
        ether 00:50:56:00:00:03
        ether 00:50:56:00:00:04

So when I go to assign interfaces in pfsense its very clear what is what.. Now I guess if someone had the same idea and was running vmware and set that same 0001 address on their wan mac I might have some problems getting an IP from my isp..  But hasn't happened so far..  And if does just change it, etc.

You just gave me a easy solution to a problem I was making difficult.

Thanks as always :)