PFSense Interface changes after adding 4th Adapter in ESXI

otortosa

Hello guys!
I have a problem with my PFSense, atm it has 3 network adapters with 3 different VLANs, with this is working fine.
The problem is at the moment the fourth adapter is added, system reboots and the 4th adapter is vmx0, the 1st adapter vmx1, the 2nd adapter vmx2 and the 3rd vmx3.
Do you know how I can fix this?
Tried to correct the adapters in vCenter in order to be the same as the PFSense but I lost the configuration for the Interfaces, NAT and Firewall Rules.
Thanks in advance!

pwood999

That always happens on EXSI. First make sure you have added as many as you need in ESXI.

Then go to the VM console & re-assign the interfaces.

otortosa

@pwood999 Now I have a PFSense with three interfaces in production, need to be fast, how is the best way to avoid this?

pwood999

Q) does the VM auto-boot afer saving the changes, or are you rebooting manually ?

You probably cannot avoid some downtime, so plan your outage for a time that has least impact to users & notify them there will be a short outage.

Practice the process on your Lab-test VM, and write down the steps for re-assigning the interfaces.

Finally repeat the process on the production VM during your planned outage window.

Note: if your prod system is that critical, create another VM and run both in HA mode ?

Averlon

You may edit the PCI ordering of the devices in the vmx config file of the VM to ensure the nics stays like before and the newly created Nic will be the next available vmx<N> adapter.

ethernet4.pciSlotNumber = "40"
ethernet3.pciSlotNumber = "39"
ethernet2.pciSlotNumber = "38"
pciBridge0.pciSlotNumber = "17"
pciBridge4.pciSlotNumber = "21"
pciBridge5.pciSlotNumber = "22"
pciBridge6.pciSlotNumber = "23"
pciBridge7.pciSlotNumber = "24"
scsi0.pciSlotNumber = "16"
usb.pciSlotNumber = "32"
ethernet0.pciSlotNumber = "33"
ethernet1.pciSlotNumber = "34"
ehci.pciSlotNumber = "35"
vmci0.pciSlotNumber = "36"
sata0.pciSlotNumber = "37"

This is an example of a VM in HW Version 21. It may look different on previous versions. Key is to have the pciSlotNumber of ethernet<N> adapter in order and no conflicts with other devices.