PfSense & CentOS on the same BOX

cletus8

Hello everyone!

I have an Athlon X2 with 2Gb Ram custom BOX/server for home use only. Currently, its running ClearOS 6.2, but I dont like the OS very much.
In the Past i tryed Smoothwall, Pfsense and Endian, and ALL of this were by far better than ClearOS, but I had to keep ClearOS because of its filesharing (Samba) Features, and the possibility of running Transmission (Bittorrent Daemon).

And this is why I come here for help: I want to have pfSense and another OS running on the same box (Centos or Debian), for filesharing and bittorrent use.
I can not just simple run 2 boxes because of the higher power consuption it will represent, and as I said, its just for home use, with less than 10 hosts in total.

So, i was doing some research, and i have found the following possibilities:

*ESXI - Its NOT a possibility because my NICs (Realtek 8139) are NOT compatible.
*Citrix XenServer - Doesnt run BSD based systems and also, the management of the system is a bit complex for my level of knowledge in this area (virtualization)
*Centos + Virtualbox - Install CentOS as the base system on my Box and then, run PFSENSE virtualized with Virtual Box or VMWare workstation 8.

The only one that would work from those alternatives is obviously the last one, but its also the most insecure one, because the firewall (pfsense) would be running virtualized in a physical box that would be directly connected to the internet. Althought, i dont really know how big the risks of doing this are.

So my question is: Is it OK if I install PFsense as a Virtual Machine? Is there any other way for doing this that would be more safe?

Thanks in advance!

dLockers

PfSense is fine as a virtual machine.

ESXi will work - you just need to modify the oem file

biggsy

@dLockers:

ESXi will work - you just need to modify the oem file

Maybe so but it has to be easier to replace the Realteks with some Intel NICS - budget permitting.

There are lots of people running pfSense virtualized and "directly connected to the Internet" - just browse through the threads in this forum.

cletus8

@biggsy:

@dLockers:

ESXi will work - you just need to modify the oem file

Maybe so but it has to be easier to replace the Realteks with some Intel NICS - budget permitting.

There are lots of people running pfSense virtualized and "directly connected to the Internet" - just browse through the threads in this forum.

I have NO idea of how to modify the OEM file to make it work with my Realtek 8139.
About buying some Intel NICs, trust me, im from Argentina (south america) and its pretty impossible buying an intel NIC here. Either because they are extremelly hard to find, or because they are extremely expensive.

I have found another virtualization solution called ProxMox.. Does anyone have any experience with this one?

dhatz

Well, if you want to run pfsense under Linux, the natural choice would be KVM.

If you want it in a desktop environment, you can run it in VirtualBox under something like Ubuntu.

dLockers

@cletus8:

@biggsy:

@dLockers:

ESXi will work - you just need to modify the oem file

Maybe so but it has to be easier to replace the Realteks with some Intel NICS - budget permitting.

There are lots of people running pfSense virtualized and "directly connected to the Internet" - just browse through the threads in this forum.

I have NO idea of how to modify the OEM file to make it work with my Realtek 8139.
About buying some Intel NICs, trust me, im from Argentina (south america) and its pretty impossible buying an intel NIC here. Either because they are extremelly hard to find, or because they are extremely expensive.

I have found another virtualization solution called ProxMox.. Does anyone have any experience with this one?

Google it? It's pretty simple, there are utilities available for ESXi 5

cletus8

@dLockers:

@cletus8:

@biggsy:

@dLockers:

ESXi will work - you just need to modify the oem file

Maybe so but it has to be easier to replace the Realteks with some Intel NICS - budget permitting.

There are lots of people running pfSense virtualized and "directly connected to the Internet" - just browse through the threads in this forum.

I have NO idea of how to modify the OEM file to make it work with my Realtek 8139.
About buying some Intel NICs, trust me, im from Argentina (south america) and its pretty impossible buying an intel NIC here. Either because they are extremelly hard to find, or because they are extremely expensive.

I have found another virtualization solution called ProxMox.. Does anyone have any experience with this one?

Google it? It's pretty simple, there are utilities available for ESXi 5

Of course i have googled it, however, there is no mods for Realtek 8139 so far.

Efonnes

You have two NICs in the box, right? On the host just configure the WAN NIC so that it has no IP addresses assigned to it and does not attempt to acquire any. The LAN NIC can either acquire a local IP from the pfSense VM or be configured manually to use it for its gateway and DNS if DHCP is not picking it up in a timely manner.