pfSense not enabling port

georgelza

sweeeeeet... so ye that delivery was 1 x DAC, 1 x other brand SFP+ Transciever.

plugged the DAC in between switch and pfsense SFP+ port 0
plugged the new Transceiver into pmox SFP+ port0
both started flashing...
go onto unifi network controller, both SFP+ ports immediately changed colour to hey we got something we recognise, vs grey or red.

in pmox console,

dmesg =>

[78378.314597] ixgbe 0000:04:00.0 enp4s0f0: detected SFP+: 5
[78433.681346] ixgbe 0000:04:00.0 enp4s0f0: NIC Link is Up 10 Gbps, Flow Control: RX/TX

and ip a

ip a
1: lo: <LOOPBACK,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 65536 qdisc noqueue state UNKNOWN group default qlen 1000
    link/loopback 00:00:00:00:00:00 brd 00:00:00:00:00:00
    inet 127.0.0.1/8 scope host lo
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
    inet6 ::1/128 scope host noprefixroute
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
2: enp2s0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc mq master vmbr0 state UP group default qlen 1000
    link/ether a8:b8:e0:02:a3:71 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
3: enp3s0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST> mtu 1500 qdisc noop state DOWN group default qlen 1000
    link/ether a8:b8:e0:02:a3:72 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
4: enp5s0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST> mtu 1500 qdisc noop state DOWN group default qlen 1000
    link/ether a8:b8:e0:02:a3:73 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
5: enp6s0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST> mtu 1500 qdisc noop state DOWN group default qlen 1000
    link/ether a8:b8:e0:02:a3:74 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
8: vmbr0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc noqueue state UP group default qlen 1000
    link/ether a8:b8:e0:02:a3:71 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
    inet 172.16.10.50/24 scope global vmbr0
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
    inet6 fe80::aab8:e0ff:fe02:a371/64 scope link
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
9: vmbr40: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc noqueue state UP group default qlen 1000
    link/ether a8:b8:e0:05:f0:91 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
    inet6 fe80::aab8:e0ff:fe05:f091/64 scope link
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
10: tap100i0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,PROMISC,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc pfifo_fast master fwbr100i0 state UNKNOWN group default qlen 1000
    link/ether c6:2d:5a:7a:41:d7 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
11: fwbr100i0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc noqueue state UP group default qlen 1000
    link/ether da:0c:52:e1:39:89 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
12: fwpr100p0@fwln100i0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc noqueue master vmbr0 state UP group default qlen 1000
    link/ether 76:c4:56:d3:6a:93 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
13: fwln100i0@fwpr100p0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc noqueue master fwbr100i0 state UP group default qlen 1000
    link/ether da:0c:52:e1:39:89 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
14: tap100i1: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,PROMISC,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc pfifo_fast master fwbr100i1 state UNKNOWN group default qlen 1000
    link/ether 76:c9:86:22:cc:30 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
15: fwbr100i1: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc noqueue state UP group default qlen 1000
    link/ether 52:9a:1c:4d:76:a6 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
16: fwpr100p1@fwln100i1: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc noqueue master vmbr0 state UP group default qlen 1000
    link/ether 26:2d:af:5a:9a:b4 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
17: fwln100i1@fwpr100p1: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc noqueue master fwbr100i1 state UP group default qlen 1000
    link/ether 52:9a:1c:4d:76:a6 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
18: tap100i2: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,PROMISC,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc pfifo_fast master fwbr100i2 state UNKNOWN group default qlen 1000
    link/ether c2:9f:1f:4e:c6:2e brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
19: fwbr100i2: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc noqueue state UP group default qlen 1000
    link/ether 7a:a8:67:a9:29:14 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
20: fwpr100p2@fwln100i2: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc noqueue master vmbr40 state UP group default qlen 1000
    link/ether 72:43:cc:4b:b3:40 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
21: fwln100i2@fwpr100p2: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc noqueue master fwbr100i2 state UP group default qlen 1000
    link/ether 7a:a8:67:a9:29:14 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
39: enp4s0f0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc mq master vmbr40 state UP group default qlen 1000
    link/ether a8:b8:e0:05:f0:91 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
40: enp4s0f1: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST> mtu 1500 qdisc noop state DOWN group default qlen 1000
    link/ether a8:b8:e0:05:f0:92 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff

now to reconfigure vlan40 from the igc0.40 onto ix0

ip a
1: lo: <LOOPBACK,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 65536 qdisc noqueue state UNKNOWN group default qlen 1000
    link/loopback 00:00:00:00:00:00 brd 00:00:00:00:00:00
    inet 127.0.0.1/8 scope host lo
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
    inet6 ::1/128 scope host
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
2: ens18: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc fq_codel state UP group default qlen 1000
    link/ether bc:24:11:c0:e8:1e brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
    inet 172.16.10.51/24 metric 100 brd 172.16.10.255 scope global dynamic ens18
       valid_lft 4206sec preferred_lft 4206sec
    inet6 fe80::be24:11ff:fec0:e81e/64 scope link
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
3: ens19: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc fq_codel state UP group default qlen 1000
    link/ether bc:24:11:81:2c:cb brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
    inet6 fe80::be24:11ff:fe81:2ccb/64 scope link
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
4: ens20: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc fq_codel state UP group default qlen 1000
    link/ether bc:24:11:1e:20:ac brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
    inet6 fe80::be24:11ff:fe1e:20ac/64 scope link
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
5: docker0: <NO-CARRIER,BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP> mtu 1500 qdisc noqueue state DOWN group default
    link/ether 02:42:cb:d9:fb:26 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
    inet 172.17.0.1/16 brd 172.17.255.255 scope global docker0
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever

happiness, making progress in right direction...

i configured my pfSense console to be accessible via 2nd address on 172.16.40.1. reconfigured that via primary 172.16.10.1 interface to now be serviced/routed via ix0, then connected to console via new 2nd, working so have a back door ;)

connected via back door and went and reconfigured vlan0, vlan20, vlan30 to now be routed via ix0 also. hit refresh on my browser which access console via 172.16.10.1 and did same for 172.16.40.1, still accessible.
at this point the below picture reflect pfsense config.

Ok, this seemed good. but (once i unplugged the 2.5 igc1 cat6 cable between ProMax port24 and pfSense ) now found i could not access anything else that sat on 172.16.10.0/24 network.

At this point wondering... am i trying to get something to work and whats the value of it... does it make sense...

To fix the above I reconfigured onto this.

Maybe leave vlan0, vlan20, vlan30 and vlan100 on igc1 as all the device that connect to that themself are either wifi, 1GbE or 2.5GbE based.
then leave vlan40 on ix0 and the device that will on there is 10GbE based.
I got an aggregation on the way anyhow. so SFP+ port 2 on pfSense will go into aggregation and the pmox and TrueNAS will go into that.

some comments, view's

note, on ubuntu-01 i still dont have a ip assigned to the vlan30 and vlan40 interfaces... so thats i guess the last to be fixed...

G

georgelza

for reference, here is my pmox datacenter

and pmox1 server network configuration.

interesting enough, without telling my unifi environment, this is what it's showing.

<note the MAC addresses assigned to net1 and net2 has been dhcp reserved in pfsense on the respective vlans as 172.16.30.11 and 172.16.40.11

10Gtek 10GBase-SR SFP+ LC Transceiver, 10G 850nm Multimode SFP Moduledell emc ftlx8574d3bnl-fc

stephenw10

@georgelza said in pfSense not enabling port:

Ok, this seemed good. but (once i unplugged the 2.5 igc1 cat6 cable between ProMax port24 and pfSense ) now found i could not access anything else that sat on 172.16.10.0/24 network.

Unclear exactly what you are testing to and from in that scenario. Just disconnecting the cable won't start routing via some other subnet if it still has an IP address directly in the subnet.

georgelza

@stephenw10

I wanted all traffic between the ProMax & pfSense to flow over the DAC.

why i reconfigured all vlan GW's to then sit on the Ix0 interface.

in the end what i got is vlan0, vlan20, vlan30 and vlan100 which is "low" bandwidth traffic get to the fSense via igb1 / 2.5GbE and then all traffic from vlan40, will sit on ix0,

G

georgelza

strange bit...
on my pfSense

on ubuntu-01

ifconfig -a
docker0: flags=4099<UP,BROADCAST,MULTICAST>  mtu 1500
        inet 172.17.0.1  netmask 255.255.0.0  broadcast 172.17.255.255
        ether 02:42:79:4c:b3:b2  txqueuelen 0  (Ethernet)
        RX packets 0  bytes 0 (0.0 B)
        RX errors 0  dropped 0  overruns 0  frame 0
        TX packets 0  bytes 0 (0.0 B)
        TX errors 0  dropped 0 overruns 0  carrier 0  collisions 0

ens18: flags=4163<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,MULTICAST>  mtu 1500
        inet 172.16.10.51  netmask 255.255.255.0  broadcast 172.16.10.255
        inet6 fe80::be24:11ff:fec0:e81e  prefixlen 64  scopeid 0x20<link>
        ether bc:24:11:c0:e8:1e  txqueuelen 1000  (Ethernet)
        RX packets 30289  bytes 4984073 (4.9 MB)
        RX errors 0  dropped 32  overruns 0  frame 0
        TX packets 15485  bytes 3129562 (3.1 MB)
        TX errors 0  dropped 0 overruns 0  carrier 0  collisions 0

ens19: flags=4098<BROADCAST,MULTICAST>  mtu 1500
        ether bc:24:11:81:2c:cb  txqueuelen 1000  (Ethernet)
        RX packets 0  bytes 0 (0.0 B)
        RX errors 0  dropped 0  overruns 0  frame 0
        TX packets 0  bytes 0 (0.0 B)
        TX errors 0  dropped 0 overruns 0  carrier 0  collisions 0

ens20: flags=4098<BROADCAST,MULTICAST>  mtu 1500
        ether bc:24:11:1e:20:ac  txqueuelen 1000  (Ethernet)
        RX packets 0  bytes 0 (0.0 B)
        RX errors 0  dropped 0  overruns 0  frame 0
        TX packets 0  bytes 0 (0.0 B)
        TX errors 0  dropped 0 overruns 0  carrier 0  collisions 0

lo: flags=73<UP,LOOPBACK,RUNNING>  mtu 65536
        inet 127.0.0.1  netmask 255.0.0.0
        inet6 ::1  prefixlen 128  scopeid 0x10<host>
        loop  txqueuelen 1000  (Local Loopback)
        RX packets 96  bytes 7756 (7.7 KB)
        RX errors 0  dropped 0  overruns 0  frame 0
        TX packets 96  bytes 7756 (7.7 KB)
        TX errors 0  dropped 0 overruns 0  carrier 0  collisions 0

georgelza

Got the 172.16.30.11 working, did a manual configuration inside ubuntu.

battling with 172.16.40.11 thats on the fiber.

G

georgelza

figured i'd try re-install ubuntu with the interfaces now "working"
assigning the multiple networks at configuration time,

as soon as ubuntu installer started, immediately picked up the intended 172.16.10.51 and 172.16.30.11 address. 172.16.40.11 did not want to get picked.

implying i have some rule problem between pfsense and the Proxmox.
this is also the interface even when manually configuring it i could not get to access on the guestVM.

G

Ubuntu installer

georgelza

i changed the interface from a vlan to a lan... as it's not a vlan anymore.

scratching head.

G

georgelza

press enough buttons and things get working, hehehehe

;)
now to unpack a bit what is what and then update diagrams for my own understanding...

then onto next phase...

G

stephenw10

@georgelza said in pfSense not enabling port:

now to unpack a bit what is what and then update diagrams for my own understanding...

Yup, a diagram here would definitely help a lot!

georgelza

@stephenw10

Da pictures... The planning, Phase 1 is completed.

The aggregation switch is on its way so that will be phase 2 cable wise by next weekend. Planning on getting another TopTon on Black Friday. will also then get the dual port 10GbE x520 Fiber card for the TrueNAS.

935535dc-06c7-4980-b202-a8fb252e68ea-NetworkPhases 2.1-Day 1.jpg NetworkPhases 2.1-Day 1.jpg

f0ebb7ab-62b8-41c3-92cc-19107bb02ae5-NetworkPhases 2.1-Day 2.jpg NetworkPhases 2.1-Day 2.jpg

4affdc3b-7a8e-432f-abb2-9f625689ec0e-NetworkPhases 2.1-Cabling 1.0.jpg
NetworkPhases 2.1-Cabling 1.0.jpg

Gblenn

@georgelza said in pfSense not enabling port:

press enough buttons and things get working, hehehehe

;)
now to unpack a bit what is what and then update diagrams for my own understanding...

then onto next phase...

G

Glad to see that you finally got it to work... it's a great feeling!
And now you know what cables and modules to use going forward. And as you already found out, there are likely others that will work as well. I suppose you were just unlucky with the one's you had...

And who knows, there might be a solution with the Topton NIC, to make it like those DELL modules as well. I guess the thing is that since there is firmware in those modules, DAC's as well, and even though protocols are "standardized", it's still a matter of interpretation sometimes... And some vendors, like Intel, choose to "blacklist" not supported devices inside some of their cards... Hence the command you tried earlier to "allow_unsupported device".

One thought about your issue with the Docker application not "finding" VLAN 40...

You can of course add a specific VLAN tag to each interface you assign to a VM. And you don't have to set the bridge or anything to be "VLAN aware". But in this case Proxmox will Untag all traffic towards the VM and Tag it going out of the bridge towards the switch..

And since docker can only "see" what the host VM is receiving (untagged traffic), neither docker not the containers will be able to attach to any specific VLAN.

To change the bridge interface (vmbr0, vmbr40) into a trunk interface, simply make it VLAN aware from the UI.
Then it will pass any and all VLAN's from 2-4094, or something like that.

And then on the VM OS, you have to handle the VLAN's. Which I have never tried myself, but basically in docker you will have to create and interface which you can then assign to the container. Something looking like this I suppose...

docker network create -d macvlan
--subnet=192.168.40.0/24
--gateway=192.168.40.1
-o parent=eth0.40
vlan40_net

docker run -d --name mycontainername --network vlan40_net some_image

Gblenn

@georgelza said in pfSense not enabling port:

Planning on getting another TopTon on Black Friday. will also then get the dual port 10GbE x520 Fiber card for the TrueNAS.

Remember the issues you had here... so when looking for x520 cards, do some googling and perhaps you can make use of your DELL links... When I got my X520's, I had read about how Intel is picky with which modules they accept. They actually whitelists (in the firmware of the card) which modules they accept, and anything that doesn't match is an "unsupported device". So I went for a Fujitsu made Intel card and have had no trouble with it. There are plenty out there and I hear Mellanox cards are great as well.

georgelza

@Gblenn said in pfSense not enabling port:

One thought about your issue with the Docker application not "finding" VLAN 40...

this was not docker, this was purely a ubuntu vm on proxmox, trying to remember now if it auto dhcp picked up ip in the end...

i did end rebuilding the vm, thinking that maybe when i build it and the network publish internally via proxmox was not 100% it might have impacted the vm so once i knew the networks were now more "right" redid the vm.. lessons learned with how i want to manage the ip ranges etc, as i build broke down and rebuild...

ps I ALSO did end making vlan40 just lan40... as it's the only network sitting on that port on the pfsense and will have a dedicated port on the proxmox hosts.

@Gblenn said in pfSense not enabling port:

Remember the issues you had here... so when looking for x520 cards, do some googling and perhaps you can make use of your DELL links... When I got my X520's, I had read about how Intel is picky with which modules they accept. They actually whitelists (in the firmware of the card) which modules they accept, and anything that doesn't match is an "unsupported device". So I went for a Fujitsu made Intel card and have had no trouble with it. There are plenty out there and I hear Mellanox cards are great as well.

Will need to find exactly what i'm looking for before the day and then hope it's there on the day to add to basket at a black friday special price.

luckily the Dell/EMC transcievers work happily in the Unifi switches so thats at least 1/2 off. looking at the prices... I now have a known workable solution locally available... so might do the transcievers locally... also

he he he. this thread turned into a network/proxmox/pfsense rabbit hole... hope it ends being useful for others... as i've noticed allot of ppl now deploy their pfsense as a guest on proxmox... so maybe this will help them.

i'm seriously impressed with these little topton devices, packs a mean amount of power in a nicely packaged solution.
with this i5 1335 and i5 1240 being 2 very proxmox option CPU's and think the U300E being awesome as a physical pfSense host, got some serious single thread capabilities.

now to figure out how i want to do the storage... know i know to little and probable allot to make better...

G

georgelza

@georgelza said in pfSense not enabling port:

ps I ALSO did end making vlan40 just lan40... as it's the only network sitting on that port on the pfsense and will have a dedicated port on the proxmox hosts.

Re the above, this might flip back as a vLan... will have to see if I patch the aggregation into the ix0 port on the pfsense or hang it off the Pro Max, like the idea of the Pro Max as i then better expose this on my Unifi Manager, most of the traffic across it will only be on it... and the little that might be from another network will be small volume so having to then go up to the pfSense as it will transverse a network/thus FW rule and then back down, don't think it's a major issue.
for those thats been following this thread, basically back at the phase 3a vs 3b discussion, which becomes more executable now that we have known working components.
G

georgelza

ha ha ha... and there i thought I was finished with questions...

Guess this more Proxmox, but might be of value to people
(sorry the Proxmox forum seem to be dead and very few sections, nothing where I can see I can even ask this).

So with lets say limited 10GbE ports on the aggregation switch.
And then also not wanting to just eat up ports on my Pro Max. I do have to run some of the traffic over the same links.

For the Proxmox I see the following.
Main management interface
Main client connectivity
Proxmox cluster interconnect
Storage.

Mapped to my network:
Main management => lan / 172.16.10.0/24
Main client connectivity => lan
Proxmox cluster +> vlan30
Storage => vlan40

Currently have lan and vlan30 on the 2.5GbE copper and then vlan40 on the 10GbE Fiber.
the other side of the storage is the TrueNAS which will have 2 x 10GbE Fiber connections.
Comment, an alternate could be to move vlan30 also onto the fiber.

At the moment, the Proxmox install just ate up the entire 1TB NVMe card...
Thinking a shared CEPH volume might be a good idea, to host the VM images on and the ISO's... so thinking of redoing pmox1 installed, giving ProxMox hypervisor say 200Gb and then making the balance available to Ceph.
For now it won't mean much but when I start adding the other nodes then it will become "valuable"

G

Gblenn

@georgelza What is your thinking re Ceph and splitting the drive for Proxmox?
Perhaps you could use that for backup of VM's ans stuff, but I'm not so sure that is a good idea? You want to keep those disks alive for a long time so I'd try to keep the disk activity low.

Perhaps it's a better idea to install a Proxmox Backup Server as a VM on one of the Proxmox machines. And then assign some disks space on your TrueNAS Scale to it, for VM backups. You can always store a few backups directly on the Proxmox machines as well, for somewhat quicker restore.

Wrt the port mappings, I wouldn't necessarily limit any port on Proxmox to a single VLAN. I mean, you can have all this on a single port if you want:

Main management => lan / 172.16.10.0/24
Main client connectivity => lan
Proxmox cluster +> vlan30
Storage => vlan40

I have two Proxmox machines with 2.5G ports and one with 1G port on the mobo, and they all have 10G SFP+ added. I assign Ports and VLANs to VM's freely and depending on need. So anything that may require high throughput, is assigned one or more 10G port. And if I want it to be in a particular VLAN, I set that in Proxmox. (so it is as if it was hanging off an Untagged port on a switch).

I also have some VLANs that only exist on my switches (no interfce or DCHP on pfsense). They are used to create switches withing the switches so to say. One thing I use it for is to "tunnel" the LTE router LAN port from our top floor, to my failover WAN on pfsense. This port is assigned on the 2.5G port on Proxmox. Same port being used for a couple of other VM's as well... In this case I have two SFP+ ports passed thru (IOMMU) to pfsense, so they can't be used for any other VM's

I mean the logical connections or assignments rather, don't have to define or limit the way you physically connect things. And I'm sort of liking 3A more in that regard, as it is cleaner and simpler on the pfsense side, and the Trunk between your two switches is 10G..

And I'm wondering about the dual connection to the NAS? What disks are you using? Would you really expect throughput to reach even 10G?

I'm wondring if this discussion should continue on the Virtualization section?
Where perhaps we could always discuss the option of virtualizing also pfsense, and the benefits and possible drawbacks of that...
I mean the i5-P1240 seems pretty much on par with my i5-11400 which is simply killing it in my setup on Proxmox... Even the 10400 that I also have gives me similar perfomance on a 10G fiber connection. 8+ Gbps speedtest with Suricata running in legacy mode.

georgelza

@Gblenn

Hi hi.

The idea of splitting the 1TB NVME into 200/800 is 200 for ProxMox Hypervisor and then 800 into a Ceph shared Volume that will be expanded across the nodes, direct OS access for fast IO.

For backup I can push that to my TrueNAS, 100TB should be enough....
Mind you not a bad idea to also use that for the ISO images as a shared source rather.

As for port mapping, was actually thinking about just running all as vLan's over the 10GbE fiber. but also with this install and the pfSense work realised having 2 ways to get onto device that work independent is not a bad idea, allow me to reconfigure/change one without me disconnecting myself.

I was also liking 3A, but then there is also the adage of dont hang switches of switches. and the traffic on the aggregation will 98% be just between the machines on it... but then that also means, just hang it off the 10GbE SFP of the ProMax. Guess i will play with this once the aggregation gets here and see.

As for the dual connection to NAS, fair comment... these are jsut 7200rpm spinning rust... probably just do it because i can... and won't have a need for that extra port anytime soon anyhow.

I'm def not keen on a virtual pfSense, I like the stand alone nature of the physical build, seperate from the rest of my environment.

my pfsense is build on the U300E processor.

G

Gblenn

@georgelza Well as long as you keep space for the VM's which will be dependent on the disk size per VM. ISO's typically don't use up that much space... I mean there are only so many ISO's you would keep... so I don't think I would spend to much energy on setting that up...

I get the thing about the dual connection on the NAS, and I would probably do the same thing, "because you can"... Happens all the time, but I guess I'm thinking freeing up switch ports. Which on the other hand, you don't need I suppose... But in reality you have 3 ports connected to the NAS, counting the 2.5G, which seems like a bit of waste? But then again, because you can...

Aha so a different CPU, with fewer cores and performance threads. BTW, how did you set this up with pfsense, given that there is a difference between the cores? Can it manage the internal processes across different types of cores?

georgelza

@Gblenn

Hi there

Yes, ISO's don't use much space, but i also don't want to have multiple copies on all the units, I'd rather have one store where they are shared.

As for the VM's the idea is to store their "VM images" on the Ceph storage. which is shared across the cluster, which mean the VM can be started on any node. With the current the VM image needs to be copied over to the target node.

the pfsense is running on a decimated TopTon server,
Proxmox is running on a different server.
the pfSense was a new installed and then a backup/restore of my config from the original celeron box and allot if trying to get things working.
Sort of how this thread started ;)
As for how pfSense uses the cores, that we would need to ask them, my previous server had 4 low end celeron's. this thing got some very very beefy new cores compared.

G