ESXi with Pfsense + another OS
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So I'm going the route of doing Pfsense completely virtual, if I can get it to work. Instead of having NAS/torrent dedicated pc, I will use one box all virtualized, which is easier / pretty damn cool. Question I havd is…
I have 2 nics...
One will be wan and one will be Lan, connected to switch...
For my NAS OS, which will be windows, can I use one of my nics(wan or lan) or do I need a 3rd nic?
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you can just plug it on the same vswitch as the lan adapter of the pfsense.
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you can just plug it on the same vswitch as the lan adapter of the pfsense.
okay awesome. I haven't set it up yet, doing that later today :) but got me thinking lol ty!
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Im following this guide
https://calvin.me/part-1-install-pfsense-on-esxi-5-5/From what the guide is showing, I'm using a vswitch for the wan on say nic1. So when making the 2nd vm, just assign same vswitch ? Will it actually show that SAME vswitch or will I just have to make a new vswitch assigned to that wan nic1?
Sorry just getting prepared lol
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if you have 2 physical nic's then you generally setup 2 seperate vswitches. (one for each nic).
then you just assign your vm-nics to the vswitch you want. pfsense will need 2 (wan & lan). your nas will only need to be on the lan-vswitch
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here maybe this helps. So you see I have 4 physical nics in my esxi host. Each is connected to different vswitch. Pfsense has a virtual nic and connection to each vswitch.
The wan physical interface goes direct to my cable modem. The other physical nics connect to my switch and then on different vlans, etc. But they could be different switches completely if you wanted full physical separation of your networks.
pfsense does not have a leg in vmkern switch because this is just for management of esxi host. this is connected to same network as lan, I noticed a huge performance increase when moving files to and from the datastore when vmkern did not share the same physical nic as your lan network, etc.
wlan has an AP plugged into the switch, and my unifi controller vm is connected to that vswitch.
dmz is just a vswitch with not real physical connection to the real world network. And then my lan is the normal where most of the vms sit.
