VirtualBox guest additions for pfSense?
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While there is no official package, you may be able to install the FreeBSD package from the shell.
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Would it offer any benefits on pfSense?
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I'm not aware of anyone running it with the additions in place to say. Few if any run using Virtualbox for production. It's not a hypervisor most people would consider a good choice for more than testing/development.
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What would you recommend for testing/homelab purposes then?
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Go with a type 1.. esxi is FREE ;)
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Sure ESXi is great for a dedicated machine. But I sometimes want to test things on my laptop (OS X) and so I need to run something that sits on top of the OS. I have Parallels and Virtualbox, and somehow I just find Virtualbox more comfortable. Do you think there is there a better choice?
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For testing/homelab you wouldn't need to worry about additions or production quality. VirtualBox is fine for testing in many cases (lots of us use it for simple stuff)
We have a VMware license so we mostly use workstation for local testing or ESX when we can. Since I moved my test VMs to ESX I have not looked back ā it's great for that (and many other things) plus you don't have to fight other things on the workstation for RAM/CPU
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If I need to test anything I fire it up on my esxi box, this allows me to put it any vlan I want in my local network.. I haven't fired up a vm on my actual workstation in years.. Not all that much money to buy a box to use as your VM host..
That would be my suggestion if your looking to have an actual homelab, then should really have a dedicated VM host.. I haven't played with vb in quite some timeā¦ But last time I used it was pretty solid, just not as useful as actual host machine to run your vms on is all.
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Same thing here, I use Virtualbox on my laptop all the time when testing stuff or learning new things while traveling.
Problem is, you always fight for RAM, especially if the Guest needs more, like 8GB, and you want two for failover etc.
Also, even in a lab, you want some VMs to run 24/7, like the central logging host maybe.
Using a dedicated virt host is a good idea, IĀ“m currently testing esxi and xen.
If VMs created on VMware Workstation can be moved to ESXi and vice versa, that would be a plus, as IĀ“m not aware of virtualbox VMs running on a type 1 hypervisor or xen VMs that can be run on a workstation/laptop. But thatĀ“s something still in the test pipeline ;). With esxi, there is definitely limits depending on the VM version, the free one does not support everything. Maybe thatĀ“s some potential for conflict with the latest and greatest on VMware workstation. Not saying there IS a problem, but somethign to doublecheck (on m y todo list).
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This thread is 3 years old, please start a new one instead of reviving old threads. Thanks.