Proliant DL360 G7 and pfSense

[Jpoblocki77]

I have a HP ProLiant DL360 G7 4b Server with 12 cores and 32 gigs of memory and 4 lan ports.  What I want to do is run fiber throughout my house to have the fastest network possibe.  For my movie server my 4 diy nas servers and various other things.  I have a Samsung 860 EVO 500GB 2.5 Inch SATA III Internal SSD that i will be installing pfSense on.  Now my question is this.  If I install a virtual machine on this server to be the actualy machine running the pfSense software, will it work?  This server was bought for another purpose, but from what I understand would make a really overkill router.  This server runs a few game servers and a web server.  I have a friend that works for SPectrum, making me all the optical cable and connectors I will need, but I am still unsure if i can use a always on virtual machine to run pfsense, and if the download caching and other plugins will work.  My goal is to create several subnets to isolate my pcs and cell phones, from my xbos ps4 rokus and fire sticks, and also isolate it from the wireless network.  BUt, this is all useless if the virtual machine is not able to do this.

 

Pardon my post if its silly, as I am just learning about networking and all that, and I am taking this on as a tinkering project, while this whole stay at home order is in place.  Any help or guides or videos would be helpful.  I have watched alot of youtube setup videos and done a MASSIVE amount of reading, but none of the reading or videos said if this would function on a virtual machines.  My plan is to use Virtual Box to run the machine and give it 400 gig of hard drive space and 4 gigs of ram.

 

Thanks,

 

Lost in networking

[samcool55]

Well, running pfsense as a VM is no problem.

As long as you have a decent hypervisor that allows you to pass through all the ethernet adapters, you will be fine.

[Jpoblocki77]

Okay, Im networking stupid.  Can you explain what a hypervisior is?  Or if I type that into google will it come up?

[Jpoblocki77]

Oracle VirtualBox  is the software i plan to use.  IF thats a hypervisor  otherwise the primary os will prolly be FreeNas unless thats going to cause a issue

 

[beersykins]

Are you installing Windows, then installing Virtualbox, then installing pfsense?

 

It would make the most sense to install a

 

Hypervisor - (VMware ESXi free, Proxmox), and 

Container Systems - (pfsense, linux, windows)

 

For a server environment this would allow you to spin up additional virtual machines if you have any other hosting requirements like a pihole or something.

 

You also should be able to consolidate four NAS systems into one or two.

[Jpoblocki77]

1 hour ago, beersykins said:

Are you installing Windows, then installing Virtualbox, then installing pfsense?

No, and I have 4 separate nas systems for a reason  Im sure my clients wouldn't like it if i decided to wipe one of the other nas boxes and i lost all their files and such, or if my kids got into their information and did something with it.  They are on a separate nas system that only I can connect to for a reason.  FreeNas will be the base operating system as this server is part of my personal nas setup.  I will then install the Virtual Box plugin to run the pfsense box with that particular virtual machine set to always be running at boot.

[beersykins]

You can still have segmentation in a consolidated box.

 

What you described doesn't make sense, however.  You're going to VM pfsense in order to protect freenas running on top of.... freenas?

[Jpoblocki77]

1 hour ago, beersykins said:

 You're going to VM pfsense in order to protect freenas running on top of.... freenas?

Its going to be part of the nas network.  I do not have another machine, nor can I afford to build one right now, as I have been laid off of work because of this lovely covid crap.  would it be teer to install a os like ubuntu server and run a bunch of virtual machines for the free nas and the nas box?  I have an old laptop but it doesnt meet the requirements of freenas let alone pfsense as it started with windows xp if i recall right.