Status of pfSense 2.0 VMware Appliance
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Is anyone working on building a VMware Appliance for pfSense 2.0-RELEASE?
It could join/replace the current v1.2.3 image referenced at http://doc.pfsense.org/index.php/PfSense_VMware_Appliance
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Try to update your 1.2.3 vm.
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Try to update your 1.2.3 vm.
I don't have a 1.2.3 VM to update. I'm currently running 2.0-Release bare metal on a Dell Optiplex GX270 and was considering going to a VM setup to take advantage of the underutilized processor and memory capacity for other purposes. I figured it would be easier to get a 2.0-Release appliance and doing a configuration restore from the current firewall to the new appliance.
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Try to create a vm and install 2.0-release
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Try to create a vm and install 2.0-release
I think I'll hold off until the CPU load issue discussed in the "VMWare Pentest lab: Extremely high CPU on host" (http://forum.pfsense.org/index.php/topic,41647.0.html) thread is resolved.
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That is not a general issue. We have customers running 2.0 in datacenters using ESX and high loads and they are not seeing issues like that. I run it in workstation and have never seen that happen. It could be something hardware or configuration specific but it's not something that is happening to everyone.
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I had the high cpu load issue under vmware server on 1.2.3 (I was testing vm at the time), but when I switched to 2.0 (64bit) that issue went away. I could never really diagnose why it was happening.
After seeing 2.0 run so good as a vm, I got rid of the dedicated pfsense box. I can't ever see myself going back. -
I used the old pfsense appliance and upgraded ..run into one issue ..the old appliance is using flexible as the nic and that performs really bad ..I did find a way to change that out to E1000 and my performance problems got solved ..but it was a hassle.
So I would not recommend using the old appliance and upgrade .. you are better off installing it from scratch. -
I am with you on that one :)
I had the high cpu load issue under vmware server on 1.2.3 (I was testing vm at the time), but when I switched to 2.0 (64bit) that issue went away. I could never really diagnose why it was happening.
After seeing 2.0 run so good as a vm, I got rid of the dedicated pfsense box. I can't ever see myself going back. -
So are tools built into 2.0? I can install 2.0 on Xen and XenServer and VMware but still having a bunch of little bugs & issues and I'm not sure if its me and my learning curve (things like device passthrough) or if its because I have no Tools installed.
Are the Tools built into the 2.0 RELEASE or should I try to install the 123 tools?
Thx for any replies.
Also - is there any progress by chance with Xen HV with the legacy drivers issue? Thx again.
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I run a lot of PFs both physical and VM.
The only difference with a VM is there is no real operational difference!
I have had a VM PF 1.2.3 with 30+ VLANs emulating a customer network shovelling data at over 80MBs-1 (that's bytes not bits) on several interfaces simultaneously. The limit is the speed of SANs and network cards and not PF itself. That was with 256Mb vRAM and one vCPU. If you make use of IPSEC etc then give it another CPU or three.
The big gotcha for VMware is to allow promiscuous mode on vSwitches if you need to use CARP and that really is it.
You don't really need VM tools but at least it makes it look integrated on the vCentre^M^Mer.
Open VM tools come from "packages".
There is no need for an appliance as such. I can provision a new VM from ISO in less than five minutes. The last upgrade from 1.2.3 to 2.0 I did had less than 30 secs downtime: I created a new VM and ran the auto install, then put the config from the 1.2.3 box onto the 2.0 box. Careful timing of the shutdown of the old box and the reboot of the new one ensured a pretty seamless transition.
With a CARP cluster the transition can be made seamless.
Cheers
Jon -
I installed Pfsense 2.0 AMD64 on Esxi 5.0 for a week, works great !!!
Before I was using 1.2.3. -
What needs to be done to install the openvm tool package for pfsense?
(thinking of moving to pfsense under esxi 5.0 and getting my ducks in a row. :)Greg
Oh, never mind…
'system, packages, available packages, openvm tools'
