Esxi and pfsense

V

vaalkai

Level E
Hi, i am planning to change my current router from Tp link mr3420 to either pfsense or SophosXG, instead of running the software directly i am planning to virtualize it on Esxi so i can run other applications also. For eg i may run PiHole as an additional instance, or use Pfsense as the firewall and use SophosXG for its content blocking capabilities alone. I plan to get the Shuttle DH170 barebones pc and put in G4400 + 8 Gb Ram.

So i am new to all of this, my question is, will this Shuttle satisfy my needs? If i plan to use both pfsense and PiHole do i need additional LAN ports? DH170 comes with dual Intel NICs, are two enough to suit my needs? When configuring PiHole, can we reuse the same two ports or it needs additional physical ports? Because one needs to be connected to WAN/Modem and the other one to my switch?

Sorry if i ask stupid questions, please help me understand this stuff. Thank you.

@vivek.krishnan i think you are an expert in this, any help mate?
 
If you plan to use the G4400 for all this and with very little blocking, it should easily work. However, at times, it might seem like the system has frozen...

Firstly, if you plan to use the SophosXG, you need not use pfsense, as the Sophos will have a majority of the capabilities of pfsense.

When you virtualise anything, you create virtual networks using virtual switches. Each of the VMs is connected to one or more virtual switches (using virtual ports) and the switches to one or more real network ports. Hence, for your use case, you need 2 real ports. In my office, we have 8 ports of which 6 are connected alongside a 7th management NIC.

Hence, yes, the PiHole can reuse the same NICs.

No need to only use ESXi, you can use Hyper V, Proxmox, XenServer and many more...

If you need help, just ping or call....

Tagging others who have done the same....

@cyberwarfare @superczar @rajil.s @tommy_vercetti
 
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