Adding physical port interfaces?
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Sorry if it's a bit hard to understand, but I have a R710 running ESXi with PFSense in a VM. It uses two ports on the R710, one for WAN one for LAN.
How would I configure it so I can use the remaining two ethernet ports as just regular ports? Kind of like on a regular home router that has 5 ports, 1 for WAN and 4 for LAN.
Thank you
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You'll have to clarify your intentions. So, you have a PFsense VM using 2 of the 4 NIC's on your ESXi host? Sounds like you're all set. What else are you trying to do? Remember, a typical home router has a built in switch, but neither your ESXi host nor PFsense is a switch, so you'll need to buy one.
As far as how can you make use of the other two NIC's on your PFsense VM, you would simply create 2 new vSwitches, assign physical adapters to each of them and then assign the new adapters inside of PFsense. But… if you're going to use ALL of your existing NICs for your PFsense VM.... why have a VM at all? Just install PFsense on bare metal.
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Remember, a typical home router has a built in switch, but neither your ESXi host nor PFsense is a switch, so you'll need to buy one.
This was all I needed, thank you. :)
I had extra nic's in the back that I'm not using so it seemed like a waste to buy a separate switch when I could've used them instead. I only needed two more ports near the server for my current setup so I thought I could save the $30 buying a new switch.
As far as how can you make use of the other two NIC's on your PFsense VM, you would simply create 2 new vSwitches, assign physical adapters to each of them and then assign the new adapters inside of PFsense. But… if you're going to use ALL of your existing NICs for your PFsense VM.... why have a VM at all? Just install PFsense on bare metal.
I still use the machine for other purposes (file server, Plex, etc), so when I bought it I thought I would be able to setup PFsense in a VM for a powerful router as well. When I bought the server, it came with the extra NIC card so I thought it would act just like more ports in the back like any other router. Guess I was wrong on that haha.
I'm still unclear as to what the point of the extra NIC's are if all I need were the WAN and LAN ports.
Thank you for your time. :)
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I still use the machine for other purposes (file server, Plex, etc), so when I bought it I thought I would be able to setup PFsense in a VM for a powerful router as well. When I bought the server, it came with the extra NIC card so I thought it would act just like more ports in the back like any other router. Guess I was wrong on that haha.
There are some people who try to utilize extra interfaces by bridging them together, but it's not recommended and you'll pull your hair out trying to get it working. Not to mention, it's not going to perform like a dedicated switch.
So, what can you do with extra NIC's on your ESXi host? For home use, I would say people typically utilize them for other VM's. There are a bunch of options for extra NICs… including, but not limited to:
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Manually load balance your VM's between the extra NIC's
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NIC Team the extra NIC's and allow ESXi to load balance the VM traffic for you
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Dedicate a NIC for iSCSI traffic to a NAS or SAN
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If you have multiple ESXi hosts, you can dedicate a NIC for vMotion traffic
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