June 5, 201313 yr So far everything is working fine. pfSense + unraid + win7 in my ESXi however I am having strange issue. Whenever I transfer big data on my unraid using my other workstation my local network will disconnect until I reboot pfSense. It is weird. You really need two dedicated NICs if you're going to use pfSense. That is likely the root of your problem, especially with that crappy Realtek NIC. You should should try to pick up a dual port gigabit Intel NIC. You can get them for cheap on eBay. WAN traffic from your DSL/cable modem should go in one port, and the other port should go out to a switch.
June 5, 201313 yr Author So far everything is working fine. pfSense + unraid + win7 in my ESXi however I am having strange issue. Whenever I transfer big data on my unraid using my other workstation my local network will disconnect until I reboot pfSense. It is weird. What do you mean by "disconnect"....what side will disconnect? Is it that your desktop and unRAID are on different zones and pfsense is doing the routing in between? ...you happen to have only that single Realtek NIC of the ASUS mobo in that box? ...getting slightly off-topic, maybe? I have 2 nics one for WAN and one for LAN. No routing is in effect since they are both on the same zone. It's kinda weird. Is it recommended that unraid have its own dedicated NIC?
June 5, 201313 yr Author So far everything is working fine. pfSense + unraid + win7 in my ESXi however I am having strange issue. Whenever I transfer big data on my unraid using my other workstation my local network will disconnect until I reboot pfSense. It is weird. You really need two dedicated NICs if you're going to use pfSense. That is likely the root of your problem, especially with that crappy Realtek NIC. You should should try to pick up a dual port gigabit Intel NIC. You can get them for cheap on eBay. WAN traffic from your DSL/cable modem should go in one port, and the other port should go out to a switch. Right now I have one built-in NIC and one dedicated. One for LAN and one for WAN. Unraid and pfSense are both sharing the LAN side.
June 5, 201313 yr ....I still don't get how you did set this up. Also, what exactly is happening when the client "disconnects"? For set-up.... Lets assume you have in your inventory: - one physical switch - one WAN modem - a bunch of client computers - one physical ESXi host with real NICs (I'd say you'll need at least three real NICs (NIC-0 to NIC-2) to set this up correctly with pfsense) Set-up as follows: -1) connect all physical LAN clients to your switch (client computers and one NIC (NIC-0) from ESXi host). -2) set up this NIC (NIC-0) in ESXi to form/connect-to a virtual switch "LAN" in ESXi -3) for LAN world on ESXi: setup your VMs like real computers in your LAN...connect all virtual NICs of the VMs to the virtual switch "LAN" Your unRAID VM needs one virtual NIC and it is connected here. -4) use TWO real NICs (NIC-1 and NIC-2) from your ESXi host and pass-through (like with the M1015 for unRAID VM) to pfsense VM -5) set-up NIC-1 as WAN in pfsense; connect your WAN-modem to the physical NIC-1 -6) set-up NIC-2 as LAN in pfsense; connect NIC-2 to your physical switch ...this should conclude your set-up. With the three NICs, your pfsense network is properly isolated, although running as a VM. With only two real NICs in your setup, only pass NIC#2 (NIC-1) to pfsense and use it as WAN...then connect LAN side of pfsense (virtual NIC) to virtual switch LAN. Do not use NIC-1 (WAN) in ESXi (and connect it to a virtual switch)...do pass it to pfsense!
June 5, 201313 yr Author ....I still don't get how you did set this up. Also, what exactly is happening when the client "disconnects"? For set-up.... Lets assume you have in your inventory: - one physical switch - one WAN modem - a bunch of client computers - one physical ESXi host with real NICs (I'd say you'll need at least three real NICs (NIC-0 to NIC-2) to set this up correctly with pfsense) Set-up as follows: -1) connect all physical LAN clients to your switch (client computers and one NIC (NIC-0) from ESXi host). -2) set up this NIC (NIC-0) in ESXi to form/connect-to a virtual switch "LAN" in ESXi -3) for LAN world on ESXi: setup your VMs like real computers in your LAN...connect all virtual NICs of the VMs to the virtual switch "LAN" Your unRAID VM needs one virtual NIC and it is connected here. -4) use TWO real NICs (NIC-1 and NIC-2) from your ESXi host and pass-through (like with the M1015 for unRAID VM) to pfsense VM -5) set-up NIC-1 as WAN in pfsense; connect your WAN-modem to the physical NIC-1 -6) set-up NIC-2 as LAN in pfsense; connect NIC-2 to your physical switch ...this should conclude your set-up. With the three NICs, your pfsense network is properly isolated, although running as a VM. With only two real NICs in your setup, only pass NIC#2 (NIC-1) to pfsense and use it as WAN...then connect LAN side of pfsense (virtual NIC) to virtual switch LAN. Do not use NIC-1 (WAN) in ESXi (and connect it to a virtual switch)...do pass it to pfsense! Alright that make sense. I should have 3 dedicated NIC. Right now I have 2 NIC which NIC1 is connected to the WAN modem and NIC2 is connected to the LAN. on the vSwitch NIC2 is there and pfsense and unraid is sharing on that NIC.
October 10, 201312 yr Hi Syntaxx, I have the same board P8H77-M but is not PRO, have the same Realtek 8111F Network card. My question is? Do you used the onboard LAN? or do you buy 2 separate NICs? I have a problem with installing ESXi 5.1.0a because when I start i can ping it, but a few minutes later the IP is gone. I installed a few time the ESXi and is always the same? How do you do for use the LAN of your P8H77-M board? Cheers! ....I still don't get how you did set this up. Also, what exactly is happening when the client "disconnects"? For set-up.... Lets assume you have in your inventory: - one physical switch - one WAN modem - a bunch of client computers - one physical ESXi host with real NICs (I'd say you'll need at least three real NICs (NIC-0 to NIC-2) to set this up correctly with pfsense) Set-up as follows: -1) connect all physical LAN clients to your switch (client computers and one NIC (NIC-0) from ESXi host). -2) set up this NIC (NIC-0) in ESXi to form/connect-to a virtual switch "LAN" in ESXi -3) for LAN world on ESXi: setup your VMs like real computers in your LAN...connect all virtual NICs of the VMs to the virtual switch "LAN" Your unRAID VM needs one virtual NIC and it is connected here. -4) use TWO real NICs (NIC-1 and NIC-2) from your ESXi host and pass-through (like with the M1015 for unRAID VM) to pfsense VM -5) set-up NIC-1 as WAN in pfsense; connect your WAN-modem to the physical NIC-1 -6) set-up NIC-2 as LAN in pfsense; connect NIC-2 to your physical switch ...this should conclude your set-up. With the three NICs, your pfsense network is properly isolated, although running as a VM. With only two real NICs in your setup, only pass NIC#2 (NIC-1) to pfsense and use it as WAN...then connect LAN side of pfsense (virtual NIC) to virtual switch LAN. Do not use NIC-1 (WAN) in ESXi (and connect it to a virtual switch)...do pass it to pfsense! Alright that make sense. I should have 3 dedicated NIC. Right now I have 2 NIC which NIC1 is connected to the WAN modem and NIC2 is connected to the LAN. on the vSwitch NIC2 is there and pfsense and unraid is sharing on that NIC.
January 2, 201412 yr Hi electron yeah i already contacted that guy and will meet him up hopefully this weekend. after that I can probably start this project. is 8gb mem enough for the meantime? I need to buy atleast 2 500gb and do a raid 1 for my datastore using my onboard raid controller is it doable? thanks has to be a hardware raid so I highly doubt your motherboard RAID is going to work. I'm going the ESXi route and plan on running my cache, parity, and five data drives on an LSI SAS 9211-8i. I was thinking that I would run two SSDs in RAID 1 for my Datastore off of my SUPERMICRO MBD-X9SCM-F-O two SATA3 ports. Are you saying there is a limitation with ESXi or something else that probably won't allow me to do RAID 1 Datastores with my onboard controller, or is this a limitation with OP's motherboard while mine should work fine? Sorry, I'm fairly new to ESXi and RAID. Edit: I read that ESXi doesn't support booting off of software RAID, but I will be booting ESXi from USB Flash, so I should be fine with onboard RAID just for my datastore SSDs, right?
January 2, 201412 yr I'm planning to do as you mentioned above - setting up a RAID1 data store using the X9SCM motherboard RAID controller, only I'll be using Xen/KVM rather than ESXi. So if it turns out you can't do this with ESXi you could always consider Xen or KVM as an alternative. :-)
January 2, 201412 yr I'm planning to do as you mentioned above - setting up a RAID1 data store using the X9SCM motherboard RAID controller, only I'll be using Xen/KVM rather than ESXi. So if it turns out you can't do this with ESXi you could always consider Xen or KVM as an alternative. :-) Thanks for the info. It sounds like ESXi won't recognize the RAID 1 SSDs as a single disk, so I'll have to look into those alternatives. I haven't heard much about them on these forums though.
January 15, 201412 yr Author Hi Syntaxx, I have the same board P8H77-M but is not PRO, have the same Realtek 8111F Network card. My question is? Do you used the onboard LAN? or do you buy 2 separate NICs? I have a problem with installing ESXi 5.1.0a because when I start i can ping it, but a few minutes later the IP is gone. I installed a few time the ESXi and is always the same? How do you do for use the LAN of your P8H77-M board? Cheers! ....I still don't get how you did set this up. Also, what exactly is happening when the client "disconnects"? For set-up.... Lets assume you have in your inventory: - one physical switch - one WAN modem - a bunch of client computers - one physical ESXi host with real NICs (I'd say you'll need at least three real NICs (NIC-0 to NIC-2) to set this up correctly with pfsense) Set-up as follows: -1) connect all physical LAN clients to your switch (client computers and one NIC (NIC-0) from ESXi host). -2) set up this NIC (NIC-0) in ESXi to form/connect-to a virtual switch "LAN" in ESXi -3) for LAN world on ESXi: setup your VMs like real computers in your LAN...connect all virtual NICs of the VMs to the virtual switch "LAN" Your unRAID VM needs one virtual NIC and it is connected here. -4) use TWO real NICs (NIC-1 and NIC-2) from your ESXi host and pass-through (like with the M1015 for unRAID VM) to pfsense VM -5) set-up NIC-1 as WAN in pfsense; connect your WAN-modem to the physical NIC-1 -6) set-up NIC-2 as LAN in pfsense; connect NIC-2 to your physical switch ...this should conclude your set-up. With the three NICs, your pfsense network is properly isolated, although running as a VM. With only two real NICs in your setup, only pass NIC#2 (NIC-1) to pfsense and use it as WAN...then connect LAN side of pfsense (virtual NIC) to virtual switch LAN. Do not use NIC-1 (WAN) in ESXi (and connect it to a virtual switch)...do pass it to pfsense! Alright that make sense. I should have 3 dedicated NIC. Right now I have 2 NIC which NIC1 is connected to the WAN modem and NIC2 is connected to the LAN. on the vSwitch NIC2 is there and pfsense and unraid is sharing on that NIC. Sorry for the late reply I have been busy. I did not use the onboard card since its a trash afterall. I bought dedicated Intel nics
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