For something else to try; I've been using the VMXNet2(Enhanced) nic without any issues, you just need to manually call up the vmxnet_load="YES" under /boot/loader.conf after vmware tools are installed.

ESXi 4.0U1 will run on an Intel i3 chip, and supports the ICH10 SATA controller.  So the harware doesn't actually have to be all that expensive.  Just don't try to run Matrix RAID :-)  If you want reasonably-priced hardware RAID that VMWare ESXi supports, I think you're limited to 3Ware cards (formerly AMCC, recently bought by LSI, IIRC).  Or go external iSCSI, the Iomega StorCenter ix line is VMWare-certified, and QNAP is a VMWare Partner member that self-certified I think.  At the very least you could hang those NASes out the window from a sturdy Cat6 cable if you had to :-). I just priced out a low-end VMWare box and I think it came to about $600 sourcing parts from NewEgg, et al.

I know this isn't as helpful as it could be, but I remember running into that problem the first time I installed pfSense under ESXi 4.0.  I've actually had better success running the LiveCD installer from ISO than using the VMWare appliance… and at the moment, I'm not getting that complaint out of ESXi like I used to. FWIW, if you install from ISO and then don't install the VM-tools package, it runs fine without complaint.  ESX should only complain if it seems the VM tools, then it doesn't, then it does, then it doesn't...

You'll want: as fast a disk as you can afford (consider linux software RAID1 [md device, NOT dm device] if you are sure you don't want to run VMWare ESXi), and as much RAM as you can reasonably afford to put on the board (I'd say 8Gb would be a starting point, not a maximum, based on my experience). CPU usage is not likely to be an issue. If you try to use "fakeraid" RAID-1 (e.g. Intel Matrix Raid, Marvell/SiliconImage/Highpoint PATA/SATA RAID) you will be unsatisfied with performance. I'm running multiple VMs (including pfSense) on a dual-cpu quad-core 2.6GHz Xeon, 24Gb RAM, hardware PERC/6i RAID controller running a pair of 146Gb 15kRPM SAS disks.  My biggest bottleneck is disk performance.  I haven't yet filled all 24Gb of RAM.  I'm not even close to hitting the wall on CPU. With today's systems it's basically impossible to buy a "fast enough" disk subsystem.  (Well, excluding the more-money-than-god people who buy the old-fashioned solid-state disks that use SRAM or DRAM, not Flash… They're probably fairly happy with their disk performance :-) It sounds like you want to use the host OS as a workstation; that's OK, although you'll probably want to spend less money on the motherboard, RAM, and chip and get an SSD to use as your root filesystem; offload the VMs onto a secondary (mechanical) disk. On the other hand, if you're OK with the VMs eating into performance of the host OS, then your setup should be fine. Note that "playing Bluray disks and H264 1080p/720p files" is still considered pretty heavy-duty use.  Just playing back a 1080p file will probably use ten times as much CPU time as all your VMs combined.  Take a close look at the I/O bandwidth rates you need to support for HTPC usage; Bluray playback involves an astonishing amount of data being transferred from disk (whether HDD or Optical)... another reason to look more carefully at your I/O setup. One last point is that I believe (haven't done it myself, so not 100% positive) if you put a supported WLAN card into a pfSense box, it can act as an Access Point for you... but not if it's virtualized.  The exception to the exception is if you can do I/O (PCI) Virtualization, which I'm fairly sure neither VMWare Server nor VirtualBox can do right now. Um... I guess I should offer some options for the I/O problem that are compatible with an HTPC setup: have a look at Iomega's NAS line: "StorCenter ix", available in everything from single-drive 500Gb units to 12-drive monsters.  QNAP also makes some good, reasonably cheap iSCSI products.  Using iSCSI lets you attach the storage at whatever level you like; you said you're using GigE, iSCSI performance will be not great but if it relieves pressure on the internal SATA controller, it might be worthwhile.

@AkumaKuruma: final word is you WANT to use e1000 as the network driver. if you are noticing a performance improvement by changing it to flexible, that is a sure sign of something really wrong with the setup of your system. Yeah, there is a huge performance difference between flexible and e1000, the latter is 5-10 times faster on normally functioning ESX boxes. @AkumaKuruma: with a clean install on good specs, there is no reason that a pfSense VMware shouldn't run at full speed as if it was installed bare metal. You'll never get full speed with any VM, there is overhead in virtualization, but it should be close.

the below directions are for VMware Server. if you use player then these directions will be pretty much useless and takes a bit more work to figure it out. for the 3 NIC's for VMs (2 for pfsense and 1 for others), go into the properties for those interfaces and disable all protocols except for "vmware bridging protocol". this will make sure that the windows host wont actually be able to use that NIC for its own use. only vmware will be able to utilize it at that point. Windows wont do anything with raw traffic unless it is running a protocol to handle it, therefore you can Internet face one of those NICs and nothing bad can happen directly since it wont know what to do with it. make sure to static bond the NICs to virtual nics that are easy to remember, ie VMNET3 for virtual machines, VMNET4 for pfsense LAN, VMNET6 for pfsense WAN. this set up will have your "other" VMs go out their dedicated NIC and back in the pfsense LAN NIC to get to the internet. your workstation would technically go out and back in its own LAN connection to get to internet. you could use internal VMware network adapter if you want to run internally from workstation straight to pfsense and not hit the physical network, but that would take adding an OPT interface to pfsense and removing default gateway from Windows LAN connection.

Currently doing exactly the same, getting rid of some older P3/P4 boxes with loud case fans and hard drives, and bringing them together in a low power server. I have 3 nics in my server running vmware server + pfSense. One is used for the direct connection to Server 2008 (the host OS), and the other two are bridged through to the pfSense VM. It's remarkably simple to setup

I have 2 vmnets bridged to adaptors in my server. Use the 'manage virtual networks' application to bridge them, you need to manually set a vmnet to bridge to the adaptor. After entering vmware server web interface you need to refresh network list, then they should be accessible. [image: vmnets.png] [image: vmnets2.png] [image: vmnets3.png]

What I would recommend if you decide to keep the 2 WAN links is to set 2 dedicated NICs and, in windows, remove all protocols except for vmware bonding. this would make sure that you are not going to accidentally route straight from the windows host OS to the internet. make sure to setup network bonding for the NICs you want to use (i.e. VMNET3 and VMNET4 for WAN connections, VMNET6 for LAN) setup a virtual machine with 3 NICs (2 set for the protocol blocked NICs and 1 for LAN).  install pfSense as normal and assign WAN and OPT1 to VMNET3 and VMNET4 and LAN to VMNET6. after that follow directions to set up WAN load balancing. I would also recommend you look into changing the NIC driver types in the virtual image to e1000 to be able to handle QoS properly inside. depending on your existing server config and/or budget, you could get some NICs with TCP/IP offloading to absorb some of the hit. I personally use Netgear GA311 gigabit cards which go for about 35 bucks, have TCP/IP offloading and run like tanks. final reminder. MAKE SURE to change startup priority to start the firewall on system startup so if the host is rebooted, the firewall will come back up also. AND make sure to install Open-vm-tools package.

I think it's all working.  I plugged my DSL and into my managed switch.  Then I connected all my connections into that VLAN.  So the VMWARE is machine is working. My VM detect a cryoto key on the system board.  How can I see if the driver for the cryptokey is working.  I have got one VPN tunnel up and running rules are in place and seems to working great. Any thoughs? RC

cpu does not support long mode for version 2, and 1.2.3 want see my internal network.  I am running on vista ultimate 64 with a quad phemon processor (2.51). RC

Thanks! Worked! Appreciate the help! Kind regards!

pfSense 1.2.2 and 1.2.3 won't install on Windows 7 Virtual PC, either.  Can't even pass disk format and disk partition part. Will try earlier version later. Both installed fine under VMware Workstation, however.

You need to ensure that you've configured Windows with 10.0.0.50 on Local area network 2 and removed TCP/IP from Local area network 1.

Thx, I did it!

I am waiting sunday for getting similar network traffic  ….. to be continued  ;)

The latest I read is they are still working on getting the kernal to work. RC

If there is support in FreeBSD for those options, it may be possible in the future. I don't think virtio is supported even in the most current versions of FreeBSD though.