I'm trying to set up a virtualised pfSense router in ESXi on a Dell server. After many hours of reading, experimenting, watching Youtube videos etc, I'm close to pulling my hairs out...
The setup:
- Dell server with 6 physical NIC's
- ESXi 6.7
- pfSense 2.4.5 running as VM (responisible for routing, VLAN, firewall, DPI, ID/IP, OpenVPN etc)
- 3 more VM's running, each of them requires a particular VLAN
VLANs:
- 10: Management
- 20: User
- 30: IOT
- 40: Surveillance
- 50: Local (no internet)
- 60: Guest
Physical connections:
- 1x Uniquiti UAP connected to NIC 0 (should be a VLAN trunk/all VLANs, since the UAP makes a SSID for every VLAN)
- 1x WAN connected to NIC 1
- 1x device connected to NIC 2 (should be VLAN 30)
- 1x device connected to NIC 3 (should be VLAN 30)
- 1x device connected to NIC 4 (should be VLAN 20)
- 1x device connected to NIC 5 (should be VLAN 20)
Optional: the Dell server had its iDRAC shared with NIC0. It can be configured for a particular VLAN. Best solution would be if it could 'join' VLAN10 (management) on the trunk on NIC 0. Not sure if that's possible, hence optional.
Things I'm heavily struggling with are:
the ESXi vSwitch and port group setup
the pfSense interface setup (VLAN, Interface groups, bridges etc)
I tried many combinations but with no luck so far.
How can this be set up the best way? I assume every physical NIC requires a vSwitch, right? I also assume vSwitch0 (NIC 0) has a port group for every VLAN such that the internal VM's can connect to it. It also has a port group with VLAN 4095 (passing al VLAN's) which is connected to the pfSense VM. If that is a correct assumption, how do I get (tag) NIC 2-5 connected to the right VLANs? I guess I need to bridge things, either in ESXi or pfSense?
Please also note that I do not want to add a managed switch. The reason I invested in 6 NIC's on the server is to prevent additional external HW.
Please help before I lost all my hair ;)