You most definitely can use virualisation on a box without AMD-V (or Intel VT).  ESXi is perfectly happy running on socket 940 Opterons - these are essentially the same processors as the Athlon64 and have been running for (literally) years.  If you think about the timeline - VMWare existed before the vitualisation extensions… You could also play with XenServer although that is restricted to *NIX (no windows) on a CPU without AMD-V / Intel VT.

I found something interesting today with VirtualBox on my desktop system, which has given me errors in the past (including the original error here): Try putting the virtual hard drive and virtual CD drive on different 'controllers' For example, I put the CD drive on PIIX3, and the hard drive on Sata 0, and I was finally, for the first time, able to get a full install of pfSense going on my desktop. My laptop runs pfSense VMs all the time with no trouble, but it appears to have issues on certain combinations of hardware.

The 1.2.3 LiveCD snapshot around July 24 offered an option to activate the serial console during setup, as described here: http://doc.pfsense.org/index.php/InstallationGuide However, the latest images like pfSense-1.2.3-20090822-0454.iso.gz is missing this option. So you have to boot up on a PC with VGA, configure the NICs, log in from another PC via 192.168.1.1 and set "Enable Serial Console" in System > Advanced. Is there any way to do this on command line? Another difference I noticed between the before mentioned images is that the July image offered a menu at the serial console to reboot, halt, or set up the NICs, while the latest image immediately quits at the command line. FYI, I set up a flash drive using the CD image instead of the flash image because the 22/08 4G flash image does not offer the Squid 2.6 and SquidGuard packages that I need to filter some annoying ads and stats sites. After setup and switching to serial console, I then place the flash drive into the Alix2.

[SOLVED] Have now upgraded 2008 to R2 and there are now no issues running FreeBSD based VM's. The upgrade was seamless, all you have to do is make sure you delete any snapshots and obviously you will need a new M$ Key. I now have my dev box back in the form of a VM yey!

If your hostmachine has just virtu boardflag.. I would try proxmox (www.proxmox.com). Install it as KVM then map your NICs.. It's working remarkably here with less overhead than VMwareserver.

I am running my PF-Sense with 2 processors and 768 meg of ram.  I have 1 connection for the WAN and 2 for the internal networks.  My processors rarely spikes to 25% when I am doing uploads from remote sites.  Normal processor utilization is 1 to 2 , may be 3%. My VM's and my normal Network share the same wan port, I see no issues. Memory utilization is 20% Disk utilization is 4% Swap file is 0% Have a seperate interface for VM verse normal traffic is is overkill.  There should be no issues sharing one interface. RC I manage 35 VM 's on XenCenter over two XenServer getting ready to open to 4 different servers expanding to 100 VM's. RC

I have set a few isolated VM's on XenServer.  We set a up a trunk port to the a isolated network and vlan.  From there we add the isolated vm to the isolated VM.  From there people can access. RC

I am guessing since this was last edited in May that you have since fixed the problem. For others researching similar problems, -You must use bridged interfaces for pfSense inside VMware otherwise it will not see any traffic. -Whatever network interface you use for WAN, turn off all protocols other than VMware binding in the host OS.   If you do not, it will most likely use up your WAN IP address and a) block pfSense from having a valid IP on WAN   and b) leave the host computer open to the internet to be pwn3d by the world -after this, the only way for yout host system to access the internet is thru the virtual firewall

The package was updated a day or two ago, reinstall and you should be set.

Yeah the issue that required the manual start has been fixed, I updated that page, thanks.

Hi I have a setup using vmware server 2.0 with two NIC's, on the WAN make sure you untick the TCP/IP option within windows so the only box ticked is the bridge for vmware the LAN side I share the same network card for windows and pfsense with no problems all depends on how much traffic you have over your LAN. cheers, Paul  ;)

You need to put the LAN on host only and it needs to be on the same subnet as your host only network (which is arbitrarily assigned, check VMware to find out).

ok ok i will give my set up now it been a day or so and its rock hard and have not stoped working yet ok i called my isp and found i got a dhcp ip from them and that push up to the dsl/router they send me witch push a diff gateway and ip to my nic on my pc ok this is my set up only way i can get it working the wan is em0 and em0 is my nic for my pc. and in pf-sense i have it up as dhcp. and on the hardware side i truned off all the nics servs but the ipv4 and 6 and the vmware bridge. no need for two nic's here but if you want two the other nic will be em1 and then in vmware that will be vmnet 1 witch will be the number two nic in your pc. but like i said that one dont work so once you get pf-sense working you can go ion your pc and disable that number two nic seeing it dont do nothing anywas. so now  got a ? i got pf-sense up and running how do i hook up a ethnet hub so i can run my ps/3 to the internet. i have not been able to get my ps/3 online since i switched from the routher/dsl box my isp give me to useing pf-sense. even to the internet run thew the router/dsl box the isp gave me to the wan nic on the pc witch will give me my dhcp settings from the isp. in my old set up it was east hook the router/dsl box to the hub with then the hub gets the ip's from the router/dsl box for the hub and then hook the pc and ps/3 to the hub to go online so i have tryed to hook the internet in to the hub witch is the wan in pfsense. witch is em0 in my pc. then hooking the hub up like i would in the old set up and dose not work. any ideas would be good and i would hope someone run in this problem befor but yet know what i am talking about and can help out in info

Hi, I think the best way to do this would be to create a second vSwitch, then assign one of the physical NICs (can figure out using the MAC address) to the new vSwitch. (You will plug the internet connection to this port) Next create a VM Network under that new vSwitch and call it something like 'WAN' or 'untrusted' Next create your VM for pfsense, give it two NICs the first one set the the VM Network from the original vSwitch (your LAN), the second the VM Network from the second vSwitch (your WAN) Be sure to note the virtual MAC address so you can assign the correct interface within pfsense's install. Now I would re-IP the service console to an internal range address (note: you will likely want to be onsite for all of this) Give the pfsense firewall LAN address an IP and access the web gui. Input your WAN information (if it is a static IP). Plug in the WAN cable. Now set the gateway of your other VMs to use pfsense. Hopefully that makes sense, I don't know what all your requirements are but I have a similiar setup running (1esx server running pfsense as a firewall for another VM and multiple physical machines.)

I m running on XenServer 5.5 now.  It looks solid.  Will have my server back on the internet on Friday.  Been down for a week, I am moving. It's been ton's of fun.  Now real question how har would it be to create a kernal that is XenServer optimized for Windows and Unix Xen implementations that would be able to be used to build full blow installation packages so we could use Xen with all it's whistels and bells enabled. RC

Hi, I got it to work today on Ubuntu. see my experience report here: http://forum.pfsense.org/index.php/topic,17056.msg88585.html#msg88585 Jean-Marie.

I know that CARP will do it.  I have had it working with XenServer with one DLS connection.  I had trouble getting it to fail back correctly.  That was with a much ealier verison and I have not tested it again.  But I know it works. RC

I have the same problem when I move vmware to a FAT32 partition. Just reformat/convert the partition to NTFS.  ;)

@DimitriRodis: We have it working under Hyper-V for a couple of clients. The trick is to use the emulated network card. No one is saying they can't get it working, its trouble stopping it working we are having  :P Again this should really be in the Virtulisation section of the forum.