Netgate Discussion Forum
    • Categories
    • Recent
    • Tags
    • Popular
    • Users
    • Search
    • Register
    • Login

    pfSense newbie: can it run in a VM and handle a 10Gb/s ISP line?

    Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved General pfSense Questions
    newbievirtualmachine10gbase-t
    35 Posts 8 Posters 6.1k Views
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as topic
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with topic management privileges can see it.
    • stephenw10S
      stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
      last edited by

      @Cool_Corona
      Right but if you use vmxnet NICs to the VM you need to disable the blacklist to get pfSense to use multiple queues on them. Which I would expect to be required to pass 10Gbps.

      @Cr4z33
      No I would not expect an i3-4130 to pass that as a hypervisor. Though it may get close I've never tried ESXi on something like that.

      And no I would not expect to see 10Gbps through a 6100 if it's NATing and filtering the traffic. Especially if that's a single stream TCP test.

      Steve

      Cool_CoronaC 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • Cool_CoronaC
        Cool_Corona @Cr4z33
        last edited by

        @cr4z33 You will not reach 10gbit/s on the hardware.

        You need Xeon CPU's.

        We run this in our testrigs to compare opnsense to pfsense

        https://www.supermicro.com/en/products/system/iot/1u/sys-510d-10c-fn6p

        Cr4z33C 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
        • Cool_CoronaC
          Cool_Corona @stephenw10
          last edited by

          @stephenw10 On current ESXi its not needed and on the older ones it hardly made a difference.

          stephenw10S 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • Cr4z33C
            Cr4z33 @Cool_Corona
            last edited by

            @cool_corona cheers mate gonna see if I can find a deal on eBay then for some used unit.

            Cool_CoronaC 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • Cool_CoronaC
              Cool_Corona @Cr4z33
              last edited by

              @cr4z33 https://www.serverworlds.com/refurbished-lenovo-x3550-m5-sff-configured-to-order-8869-ac1/

              Cr4z33C 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • provelsP
                provels
                last edited by

                FWIW, even my ancient 2012R2 Hyper-V VM on a 14 year old host shows the logical interface as 10G, but I think you would need a very high power host to come near the packet processing power needed. Free standing host would be better. Then again, I can't even imagine needing 10G unless I had thousands of users anyway. But I'm a dinosaur.
                ff41ff25-775d-4ecf-bc54-c84a1d42fc7d-image.png

                Peder

                MAIN - pfSense+ 24.11-RELEASE - Adlink MXE-5401, i7, 16 GB RAM, 64 GB SSD. 500 GB HDD for SyslogNG
                BACKUP - pfSense+ 23.01-RELEASE - Hyper-V Virtual Machine, Gen 1, 2 v-CPUs, 3 GB RAM, 8GB VHDX (Dynamic)

                Cool_CoronaC 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • Cool_CoronaC
                  Cool_Corona @provels
                  last edited by

                  @provels You need new nics and xeon's to reach it... and not running it in a Hyper-V environment.

                  provelsP 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                  • stephenw10S
                    stephenw10 Netgate Administrator @Cool_Corona
                    last edited by

                    @cool_corona said in pfSense newbie: can it run in a VM and handle a 10Gb/s ISP line?:

                    on the older ones it hardly made a difference.

                    Hmm, that's very much not been my experience when working with customers virtual installs. Setting that value usually dramatically increased throughput or reduced per core CPU loading. Though that won't be the case in FreeBSD main builds.

                    Steve

                    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                    • provelsP
                      provels @Cool_Corona
                      last edited by

                      @cool_corona said in pfSense newbie: can it run in a VM and handle a 10Gb/s ISP line?:

                      @provels You need new nics and xeon's to reach it... and not running it in a Hyper-V environment.

                      Would be less than worthless on my 75Mb WAN, my GB LAN and 54Mb WLAN...

                      Peder

                      MAIN - pfSense+ 24.11-RELEASE - Adlink MXE-5401, i7, 16 GB RAM, 64 GB SSD. 500 GB HDD for SyslogNG
                      BACKUP - pfSense+ 23.01-RELEASE - Hyper-V Virtual Machine, Gen 1, 2 v-CPUs, 3 GB RAM, 8GB VHDX (Dynamic)

                      Cool_CoronaC 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                      • Cool_CoronaC
                        Cool_Corona @provels
                        last edited by

                        @provels Yeah...

                        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                        • Cr4z33C
                          Cr4z33
                          last edited by

                          This post is deleted!
                          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                          • Cr4z33C
                            Cr4z33 @Cool_Corona
                            last edited by

                            @cool_corona said in pfSense newbie: can it run in a VM and handle a 10Gb/s ISP line?:

                            @cr4z33 https://www.serverworlds.com/refurbished-lenovo-x3550-m5-sff-configured-to-order-8869-ac1/

                            Thanks mate, but living in the EU that would cost me too much hehe.

                            I have however found a refurbished Supermicro CSE815 - X10SLH-LN6TF / N6-ST031 for quite a very interesting price.

                            Would that finally be good for my needs?
                            Might also be a good purchase to start learning networking in a more serious way for me.

                            Cool_CoronaC 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                            • Cool_CoronaC
                              Cool_Corona @Cr4z33
                              last edited by

                              @cr4z33 said in pfSense newbie: can it run in a VM and handle a 10Gb/s ISP line?:

                              CSE815 - X10SLH-LN6TF

                              No that CPU cant handle it...

                              Cr4z33C 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                              • Cr4z33C
                                Cr4z33 @Cool_Corona
                                last edited by

                                @cool_corona alright may I ask you then what Xeon CPUs suite my needs so that I can monitor the eBay bargains? ๐Ÿ˜„

                                Cool_CoronaC 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                • Cool_CoronaC
                                  Cool_Corona @Cr4z33
                                  last edited by

                                  @cr4z33 Core count is not that important but CPU speed is.

                                  https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/details/processors/xeon/d/products.html

                                  Look after something on this list if you can...

                                  Cr4z33C 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                                  • Cr4z33C
                                    Cr4z33 @Cool_Corona
                                    last edited by

                                    @cool_corona thank you for all your help. ๐Ÿ‘๐Ÿผ

                                    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                    • L
                                      LJGriz
                                      last edited by LJGriz

                                      I'd like to add that adding the following lines to /boot/loader.conf to my pfSense CE 2.6.0 VM hosted under ESXi 6.7 has been stable for the past few days, and increased my speeds from ~1.8gbps up/down to ~6gbps up/down. Keep in mind that these speeds have been validated on the following hardware:

                                      VM Host: Intel Xeon-D 2146NT w/64GB RAM, dual Intel X722 network adapters
                                      VM Guest: pfSense 2.6.0 CE w/8 vCPUs, 16GB RAM.
                                      -No PCIe-passthru, straight up standard vSwitches.

                                      Workstation behind pfSense: AMD Ryzen 3700x, 64GB ram, dual X520 network adapters.

                                      No switches between, single mode fiber between both the workstation and the VM host.

                                      Mind you speeds could most likely improve, but the trunk line out of town during the time of testing is 10gbps, but saturated with close to 4gbps, thus the nearly 6gbps results.


                                      /boot/loader.conf
                                      hw.pci.honor_msi_blacklist="0"
                                      dev.vmx.0.iflib.override_ntxds="0,4096"
                                      dev.vmx.0.iflib.override_nrxds="0,2048,0"
                                      dev.vmx.1.iflib.override_ntxds="0,4096"
                                      dev.vmx.1.iflib.override_nrxds="0,2048,0"

                                      Cool_CoronaC 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
                                      • Cool_CoronaC
                                        Cool_Corona @LJGriz
                                        last edited by

                                        @ljgriz Note that SATA runs out of juice at 6gbps......

                                        So if you run SATA drives, then it wont go higher.

                                        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                        • First post
                                          Last post
                                        Copyright 2025 Rubicon Communications LLC (Netgate). All rights reserved.