pfSense and UT on same VMWare ESX 5 Host

[sky-knight]

What do you care? Promiscious mode is set on the interface by the software in the VM when needed. You're simply configuring the vSwitch to ALLOW it. Besides, there's nothing else on the vSwitch to abuse it.

Unless you're afraid someone is going to hack into VMWare and install something? I submit at that point you have larger problems.

Just set the vSwitch to only have 2 ports.

[photonman]

It can be.
Some people have great success virtualizing untangle, some even specifically with pfsense and untangle.
Others run into intermittent and performance or bizarre issues.

I wish I could say I knew why some people fall into one camp vs the other.

so far I am thinking I will be a member of the succussful UT virtualizers camp!

Thanks in much part to the comments received in this thread!

Here is a suggestion, could there be a separate forum topic for "UT Virtualization" as it wil become more and more prevalent and it is very doable it would help people to find all the vm threads easier to assist with a successful implementation?

[photonman]

VMXNET 3 Drivers

I noticed the ova template I used has E1000 drivers for the Intel nic emulation and my experience with VMWare was that the VMXNET 2 or 3 drivers were the preferred for best performance.

So I am going to switch out my NICS in UT to the VMXNET3.

Is there a reason I should stay with the E1000?

When I added the VMXNET3 nics to the my UT VM, the UT network interfaces page showed that new nics were detected and they seem to be added to the interface list with no problem.

[WebFooL]

photonman,

I will switch them to VMXNET3 now when i generate them on ESXi 5.1 and with hardware 9.

There are no known problems with VMXNET3 but i preferd E1000 with older ESX versions.
And as I am createing the OVA files it became E1000.

[photonman]

photonman,

I will switch them to VMXNET3 now when i generate them on ESXi 5.1 and with hardware 9.

There are no known problems with VMXNET3 but i preferd E1000 with older ESX versions.
And as I am createing the OVA files it became E1000.

Cool,

and thanks by the way, for that ova template. It worked perfect and the vmtools updated with no problem.

[WebFooL]

Np..

I just got my ESXi 5.1 Env so the news version of OVA's will have a higher tool version and virtual hardware version.

[photonman]

Np..

I just got my ESXi 5.1 Env so the news version of OVA's will have a higher tool version and virtual hardware version.

in your vmware experience, is there a noticable difference in the UT performance with the E1000 vs. VMXNET drivers?

[sky-knight]

I wouldn't recommend swapping out to the VMXNET drivers until after Untangle does the kernel migration to the new Debian. If you do some digging, you'll find there are still some issues with VMXNET and Debian 5. Also, the e1000 drivers are built into every linux kernel under the sun. I'm not sure how the VMXNET still will fly with the Debian 6 conversion. The drivers are included and compiled as a part of the tools installation. So it's possible the drivers will fail to function post that specific upgrade. However, Debian 6 has built in support for VMXNET, so will it just pickup where it left off?

I'd test it, but I'm a Citrix shop now. VMWare is great, but they want too much money and Citrix Desktop Server is just too darn awesome.

Performance wise, you're looking at saving considerable RAM on the hypervisor to use VMXNET vs e1000 emulation.

[WebFooL]

In my setups with Untangle 8 or 7.4 cant remember when i did the tests but I had allot more success with E1000.

When UT gets Debian 6 (Hopefully in the next rls) i will be testing VMXNET 3.

[sky-knight]

I agree, Debian 6 + VMXNET 3 should work wonderfully.

Of course e1000 will work just as well too.

Also, Debian 6 might let me make xva's for Xenserver support like you do for VMWare. I'll also be looking at Hyper-V.

Untangle gets me that new kernel, Nexgen is going to attempt to blow the top off this. It's about time we moved Untangle out of the niche and into the enterprise.