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

    Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved General pfSense Questions
    newbievirtualmachine10gbase-t
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    • 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
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