Deploy pfSense, RouterOS or OpenWrt router software using Virtualization Station

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Moogle Stiltzkin
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Deploy pfSense, RouterOS or OpenWrt router software using Virtualization Station

Post by Moogle Stiltzkin »

Image
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXMkQQAu5Sg

is anyone using this for their network? any comments how well its working for you? :'

personally i feel something like a dedicated pfsense box is more down my alley. i don't have to worry if i incorrectly setup the vm :)
NAS
[Main Server] QNAP TS-877 (QTS) w. 4tb [ 3x HGST Deskstar NAS & 1x WD RED NAS ] EXT4 Raid5 & 2 x m.2 SATA Samsung 850 Evo raid1 +16gb ddr4 Crucial+ QWA-AC2600 wireless+QXP PCIE
[Backup] QNAP TS-653A (Truenas Core) w. 4x 2TB Samsung F3 (HD203WI) RaidZ1 ZFS + 8gb ddr3 Crucial
[^] QNAP TL-D400S 2x 4TB WD Red Nas (WD40EFRX) 2x 4TB Seagate Ironwolf, Raid5
[^] QNAP TS-509 Pro w. 4x 1TB WD RE3 (WD1002FBYS) EXT4 Raid5
[^] QNAP TS-253D (Truenas Scale)
[Mobile NAS] TBS-453DX w. 2x Crucial MX500 500gb EXT4 raid1

Network
Qotom Pfsense|100mbps FTTH | Win11, Ryzen 5600X Desktop (1x2tb Crucial P50 Plus M.2 SSD, 1x 8tb seagate Ironwolf,1x 4tb HGST Ultrastar 7K4000)


Resources
[Review] Moogle's QNAP experience
[Review] Moogle's TS-877 review
https://www.patreon.com/mooglestiltzkin
araya1987
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Re: Deploy pfSense, RouterOS or OpenWrt router software using Virtualization Station

Post by araya1987 »

I have been tempted to try that but just to think the amount of time that will take me to configure everything makes me want to buy a pfsense box (qotom maybe) instead.


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Moogle Stiltzkin
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Re: Deploy pfSense, RouterOS or OpenWrt router software using Virtualization Station

Post by Moogle Stiltzkin »

araya1987 wrote: Sun Jun 09, 2019 3:05 pm I have been tempted to try that but just to think the amount of time that will take me to configure everything makes me want to buy a pfsense box (qotom maybe) instead.


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i also feel the same way. thats why i didn't get into it myself :(

protectli looked good to me. the cooling on it is way better than what i'm using right now. i can leave it on 24/7 and not have to worry about over heating. it's in a small size and with all the necessary hardware without me having to do a diy and set that all up myself

Passively Cooled Quad Core 4 port Gigabit NIC pfSense box from protectli review
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMNkJBtDWYE


so then all i need do is install the software using the guides on youtube. that part is easy :wink:
NAS
[Main Server] QNAP TS-877 (QTS) w. 4tb [ 3x HGST Deskstar NAS & 1x WD RED NAS ] EXT4 Raid5 & 2 x m.2 SATA Samsung 850 Evo raid1 +16gb ddr4 Crucial+ QWA-AC2600 wireless+QXP PCIE
[Backup] QNAP TS-653A (Truenas Core) w. 4x 2TB Samsung F3 (HD203WI) RaidZ1 ZFS + 8gb ddr3 Crucial
[^] QNAP TL-D400S 2x 4TB WD Red Nas (WD40EFRX) 2x 4TB Seagate Ironwolf, Raid5
[^] QNAP TS-509 Pro w. 4x 1TB WD RE3 (WD1002FBYS) EXT4 Raid5
[^] QNAP TS-253D (Truenas Scale)
[Mobile NAS] TBS-453DX w. 2x Crucial MX500 500gb EXT4 raid1

Network
Qotom Pfsense|100mbps FTTH | Win11, Ryzen 5600X Desktop (1x2tb Crucial P50 Plus M.2 SSD, 1x 8tb seagate Ironwolf,1x 4tb HGST Ultrastar 7K4000)


Resources
[Review] Moogle's QNAP experience
[Review] Moogle's TS-877 review
https://www.patreon.com/mooglestiltzkin
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rafale
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Re: Deploy pfSense, RouterOS or OpenWrt router software using Virtualization Station

Post by rafale »

I have been using pfsense with dual wan on a VM using virtual station for several years now. There are some quirks to this setup which I have learned to workaround but it has been rock solid and I have been very satisfied with the performance and feature set. The biggest quirk is that the nas initially after bootup has no internet access. Earlier firmware versions had issues with it. Failed firmware updates also cause you to have no router... making me a little more conservative on testing beta firmwares... otherwise setup is no different than a dedicated box.

edit: corrected typos. Sorry for the gibberish, I was posting from my phone.
Last edited by rafale on Mon Jun 10, 2019 1:54 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Server: TVS-872XT i9 9900 ES, 64GB DDR4 2666MHz, intel X550-T2, Asus RTX3070 Dual OC (On pico PSU), 2x Phison E12 1TB M.2, 4x Micron 5210 7.68TB, 4x WD Purple 4TB
Backup NAS: TS-473 20GB DDR4 2400MHz, Mellanox ConnectX3, 2x Samsung PM871b 256GB M.2, 4x WD Red 8TB
Former units: TVS-1282, TS-871, TS-469
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Moogle Stiltzkin
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Re: Deploy pfSense, RouterOS or OpenWrt router software using Virtualization Station

Post by Moogle Stiltzkin »

rafale wrote: Mon Jun 10, 2019 9:42 am I have been using pfsense with dual wan on a VM using virtual station for several years now. There are some quirks to this setup which I have learned to workaround but it has been rock solid and I have been very satisfied with the performance and feature set. The biggest quirk is that the nas initially after bootup. Earlier firmware veraions had issues with it. Failed firmware updates also cause you to have no router... making me a little more conservative on testing beta firmwares... otherwise setup is no different than a dedicated box.
yeah this is a major con for me.

when i have to update router, i need to take that offline to flash and reconfigure.

but other than internet disruption, it's no big deal when i'm streaming on the qnap because it's using the switch on lan just fine during that down time.

but if the router + qnap is combined, then if that hardware gets taken offline, while then you got a bigger disruption you can't avoid :shock:

thats why i rather run it on a separate hardware, so you don't have a single point failure that disrupts other things from just simply working while you sort that other thing out.

anyway thx for reconfirming what i suspected :(
NAS
[Main Server] QNAP TS-877 (QTS) w. 4tb [ 3x HGST Deskstar NAS & 1x WD RED NAS ] EXT4 Raid5 & 2 x m.2 SATA Samsung 850 Evo raid1 +16gb ddr4 Crucial+ QWA-AC2600 wireless+QXP PCIE
[Backup] QNAP TS-653A (Truenas Core) w. 4x 2TB Samsung F3 (HD203WI) RaidZ1 ZFS + 8gb ddr3 Crucial
[^] QNAP TL-D400S 2x 4TB WD Red Nas (WD40EFRX) 2x 4TB Seagate Ironwolf, Raid5
[^] QNAP TS-509 Pro w. 4x 1TB WD RE3 (WD1002FBYS) EXT4 Raid5
[^] QNAP TS-253D (Truenas Scale)
[Mobile NAS] TBS-453DX w. 2x Crucial MX500 500gb EXT4 raid1

Network
Qotom Pfsense|100mbps FTTH | Win11, Ryzen 5600X Desktop (1x2tb Crucial P50 Plus M.2 SSD, 1x 8tb seagate Ironwolf,1x 4tb HGST Ultrastar 7K4000)


Resources
[Review] Moogle's QNAP experience
[Review] Moogle's TS-877 review
https://www.patreon.com/mooglestiltzkin
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rafale
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Re: Deploy pfSense, RouterOS or OpenWrt router software using Virtualization Station

Post by rafale »

Man you are all over YouTube...

The advantage with using the NAS though is that you don't need extra hardware and it is plenty powerful. If you were to go with a dedicated pc, it is a bit difficult (expensive) to get something to run high bandwidth with DPS and IPS (Suricata/Snort/Squid) which is what I run. Your 877 has plenty of power to do this...
Server: TVS-872XT i9 9900 ES, 64GB DDR4 2666MHz, intel X550-T2, Asus RTX3070 Dual OC (On pico PSU), 2x Phison E12 1TB M.2, 4x Micron 5210 7.68TB, 4x WD Purple 4TB
Backup NAS: TS-473 20GB DDR4 2400MHz, Mellanox ConnectX3, 2x Samsung PM871b 256GB M.2, 4x WD Red 8TB
Former units: TVS-1282, TS-871, TS-469
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Briain
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Re: Deploy pfSense, RouterOS or OpenWrt router software using Virtualization Station

Post by Briain »

Hi

For many years I used Draytek routers (which are great) and my last one was a 2830 (which I still keep as a configured spare) and whilst they are great, when I started adding a bunch of inter-VLAN routes, it soon became clear that the hardware was being over-stretched (I've recently worked on a current Draytek and it was a flying machine; the firmware update happened so quickly that I thought I'd borked it)! :)

When I realised I required something with more grunt (and a better interface for setting inter-VLAN rules) I tried Sophos UTM as a VM (probably about 4 years ago) on a TS-453 Pro, basically just to familiarise myself with its interface (which I immediately fell in love with) then when I decided to deploy it, I bought myself a fan-less mini-PC from Alibaba (J1900 CPU, 120 GB SSD, 4 GB RAM; you can find them using search terms such as 'industrial router fanless PC') for about £200 and it's been in service now for a little over 3 years. It not only cost me less than a SOHO router, but it draws about the same power as a SOHO router, but in use as a Sophos UTM box, CPU typically sits at about 4% (and it rums very cool) so I am very happy with it. I'm pretty much using all the features, including HTTPS interception (so it decrypts, does AV, re-encrypts and mints a cert; obviously, I have had to install myself as a CA on each machine residing on the VLANs which have HTTPS inspection, but I have 'normal' VLANs for media boxes, Amazon Echo, and the likes) and I also use it to reverse proxy a web server farm (okay, a single Raspberry Pi, so a pretty darned small server farm)! :D The only downside of Sophos UTM is that for the home use version (which is free) there is a 50 active IP address limit (rolling over 7 days) but I am still well under that limit, so it is not a problem for me.

At some point, I do plan to try pFsense as a VM (I now have a TS-453A), again just to have a poke about in order to familiarise myself with its interface (this being in case I ever have to move away from Sophos, perhaps due to me exceeding the 50 IP limit) but if I was planning to deploy it, I think I would buy the Netgate SG-1100 (https://store.netgate.com/pfSense/systems.aspx) as the US prices is only about $150 and as pointed out by Moogle Stiltzkin, you don't really want your network going down whenever you reboot the Qnap (particularly so as the process takes quite some time to complete).

So in short, yes, I do plan to use the VM version, but more just as a test bed to see how it all looks; I wouldn't consider using a VM for the final solution.

Bri

Incidentally, someone here mentioned that the roadmap for pFsense indicated that future versions would not run on a J1900 (just pointing that out in case anyone reads the above and considers a fan-less mini-PC).
TS-119, 1 X Seagate ~~ TS-219, 2 X Seagate (R1) ~~ TS-453A, 2 X 3 TB WD Red (R1) ~~ TS-659, 5 X 1 TB Hitachi Enterprise (R6)
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darrensmith
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Re: Deploy pfSense, RouterOS or OpenWrt router software using Virtualization Station

Post by darrensmith »

I've setup my home network to have everything going through a pfSense VM.

Image

You can find more info on my setup here:
https://blog.darrensmith.com.au/updated ... ff61026258
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devaus
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Re: Deploy pfSense, RouterOS or OpenWrt router software using Virtualization Station

Post by devaus »

Hey darrensmith, your blog post is deleted. is it possible to upload it cheers.
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