I don't think vmware accounts for such a setup.  You can clearly assign more than 1 physical nic to a vswitch.. But they would be used in teaming/failover/etc. sort of situation.  I don't think you can just use them like physical ports on a switch and connect specific hosts that are on the same network.

Let me do a little digging and play with my setup, I am currently running esxi 5.5 as well and have multiple physical nics on the host I can play with.

edit:  So a read of this
http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/virtual_networking_concepts.pdf

I really don't see how you can do what your after - the connection of physical nics to a vswitch is not meant to be like ports on a normal switch.  They are used for teaming or load balancing or failover.

you might be able to setup a load balance and then use route based on ip hash, both source and destination IP..  But I think your going to run into problems.

What you could do is create 4 vswitches, with each switch connected to a physical nic and then in pfsense with 4 vnics 1 each connected to each switch and then bridge these vnics in pfsense.. But don't think would be a great performer?

Make sure you have installed pfSense to the HDD and that you are not booting from the CD/ISO.

thanks for the info.

fixed the VMXNET 3 and PPTP is working

BUT TRAFIC SAHPER ALTQ is not recognizing my network adapters….

how can i fix it ?
i'm using pfsense 2.1 with esxi 5.5
thanks in advance

Dude look at your traceroute

Tracing route to cnn-56m.gslb.vgtf.ney [157.166.249.11]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
1      <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms 192.168.1.1
2      *          *        *        Request time out
3      *          *        192.168.1.1    reports: Destination host unreachable.

3      *          *        192.168.1.1    reports: Destination host unreachable.

You must have gateway set to itself on your lan?  Lan interface should NEVER have a gateway set on the interface.  If you have downstream networks that you need to access via your lan interface, then you would create a gateway and route to these networks.. But you would NOT assign the gateway to the lan interface directly on the interface settings.

This makes pfsense think its a WAN sort of interface, and could enable NAT, etc.  All kinds of BAD things happen if you do this and yeah not going to work.

You hit pfsense 192.168.1.1 – but then hop 3 192.168.1.1 says sorry can not talk to that host.  This is clearly not right and points to you having a gateway set on the interface to me.

I have found the erorr/ I am not able to configure my pfsbox with my lease-line internet!

hi jimp,

I need help on clearing out the WAN configuration in my web GUI. I can no longer access the GUI page itself. It is not that I dont know my log in credential but the webGUI doesnt load at all. I don.t know why.

I already tried to disconnect th WAN connection from the router but still i cant access the GUI page via LAN IP.

This problem started when I decided to configure the pfbox WAN interface as static. When I saved the configuration, there I can no longer launch and access the GUI page.

I see. Thanks alot jimp! I never thought I had to select freebsd-64.

It's a relief knowing that its not really an attack. l'll post the dhcp logs.

Thanks for your answer. It's work fine. Now for testing purpose but I want to move for production. I have this problem to resolve. I have only a not good wifi connection and I want to subscribe a second wifi connection to create a load balancing and a fault tolerance. If is possible a want to create a binding connection but I read that is no possible with pfsense actually.

@kijianshi – Yeah I did already actually I am trying the fresh installation from 203 and/or 2.1 but am having a "cp downt suport long mode" error. Dont know what to do. I have created a new thread for the error.

And what network does pfsense get on its wan inteface?  Lets say it was 192.168.1.0/24 and you are using 192.168.1.0/24 on pfsense lan – then yeah that is not going to work..

You need to use a different network on the pfsense lan then pfsense has on its wan.

Well all I can tell you is how easy networking is with esxi, since this where I have the most experience.  But yes in general networking should be simpler in type 1

With esxi you create virtual switches and then either connect those to physical interfaces or dont.  But any vms can be tied to any vswitch or number of virtual switches with virtual interfaces.  With esxi it is very simple to create port groups with vlan tagging or not, etc.

http://wiki.xen.org/wiki/Xen_Networking
http://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Network_Model

So for example in my setup if you just look at internet access and my lan - leave out my other networking segments.  I have a physical nic connected to vswitch WAN, and physical nic connected to vswitch LAN.

the wan vswitch is connected to my cable modem.
the lan vswitch is connected to my physical lan switch.

I create a vm, give it a virtual nic and that is connected to whatever vswitch I want.  If connected to my lan vswitch it is like any physical box on my network, has its own mac, and to my physical network it is no different than if the device was physically connected to a switch.

Another option for you from opensource for type 1 would be smartos - someone was asking if anyone was interested in a guide on getting pfsense up and running on that, etc.  I don't think he saw enough interest to move forward with his guide though.

To me a type 1 is much easier to work with and removes any sort of management of the host OS

type 1 you have

hardware - vmhost os - vms

type 2 you have

hardware - OS - vmhost os - vms

With type 1 your working with an OS that really only thing to do is manage the vms use of the hardware - which is was designed to do.. Not provide all the features that a normal OS does, etc.

Type 2 you have your OS that manages your vmhost OS use of the hardware, and then vms on top of that.  If anything outside of extra complexity, and management of that hardware OS lets call it.  You have reduced your vm's resources available since your running a full OS, however little those resources are - it takes away from what the vms can use.

Since you mention your working with a limited sort of hardware, I would think anything that reduces overhead would be good.  Like removing the OS that your virtual software has to run on top of.

Your solution can and does work - I just don't see the point of it, unless you plan on using the box your planing on doing this on as a normal workstation at the same time your running your VM(s) on it.

So not having the issue with tools showing running, or starting - but did have issue with esxi 5.5 saying running, but for version where it use to say 3rd party, it says not installed ;)

So on the bottom of that linked install guide is a comment how to fix it

I also experienced this strange behavior after upgrading to ESXi 5.5.
I could fix it with the following steps:
1. Choose "Install VMware Tools" from the VM's console menu
2. Wait a few seconds, then choose "End VMware Tools install".
3. Wait a few seconds, refresh the VM view, and the status might eventuell change to "Installed".

Now show correct in the client, just need to check vserver

running.png
running.png_thumb

fix for you: http://forum.pfsense.org/index.php/topic,69595.0.html

Curious why your changing ports in your forward from 3395 to 3389?  You sure you actually told your rdp client to connect to port 3395?

Here
https://doc.pfsense.org/index.php/Port_Forward_Troubleshooting

And also if still having issues - post up screens of your rules so we can see what your doing wrong.. Have source port set is common mistake.

You sure its not just local firewall of where your trying to rdp too - this is another common mistake.  Your off that boxes local lan, so its firewall most likely is not going to have that open.  Unless you set it to be.