Creating a virtual router in Proxmox

I go over how a virtual router can be created in a VM using proxmox, and how the network needs to be setup for this to work.

[@jaymehs]

One of the major things I really appreciate about how you went about this video is the first 6.5 mins, where you explain how everything works physically. I've been struggling with topics like VLANs, gateways, switches and required hardware for my first home lab. 99% of videos I've seen so far are either too theoretical to be useful or just a demo directly in proxmox with a very vague explanation of well this works like x but ultimately depends on your network. Extremely well put together tutorial. Massive thank you!

[@falsemcnuggethope]

Many videos don't even really explain the end goal before they start showing how to configure stuff. So, you may end up watching a tutorial to do something you don't want to do.

[@DocMacLovin]

I digg the Rocky Horror Picture Show style. KUDOS!

[@numberboxgamer]

I really wish I had found your channel a week or two ago. You're so much better at actually teaching than many of the other channels around. I really hope you know how important a skill teaching can be, and I hope you find a way in your life to leverage it!

[@arcadiosincero]

I setup the pfSense firewall for my lab's network at work as a VM on our Proxmox cluster. I was questioning the wisdom of doing such a thing because if the firewall went up, there would be no way to get into the cluster remotely. However, that decision quickly justified itself when the host the firewall lived on decided to take a dirt nap. Proxmox then automagically migrated the firewall to another host in the cluster. We were down for about 5 minutes. It was awesome.

[@cirniman]

Sou must have dual wan, then? I have one fibercable from my isp that goes into my 10g NIC which has been passthrough the pfsense VM. How could I possibly setup HA with one fiber cable?

[@SuperSpecies]

@@cirniman if the NTU from the provider is still fine, you can just connect it to a switch or vlan that is available to all vm hosts

[@thedankachu8653]

The visual of the network topopoly in the beginning of the video was a super good idea. Made it infinitely easier to follow and understand.

[@jimweasel2088]

I love the explanation in the beginning with physical examples. Well done!

[@fredrikung3903]

I'm looking for ways to explain stuff like this to students, and I found this video to be very helpful - thanks! No one has explained it like this before!

[@W4tchUrSix]

Dude as was said before. You physical demo was fire. Helped me understand a lot more clearly what is going on. Thank you‼🔥😃

[@alx913]

Hands down the best tutorial for virtualizing routers, you're the best man! Thank you so much

[@irawhitejr]

I use untangle and I just got a mini pc with 2 ports and you have no idea how big of a help this was, you have really good videos thank you!

[@juapem]

Great explanation! In 20minutes you saved me days reading of documentation

[@curmudgeoniii9762]

You do a very good job explaining the details of whatever subject you are addressing... Please consider doing on with PFsense on a single home lab computer in ISP internet(modem)... Thanks for you very good videos...

[@salvatorefranco8356]

Thank you very much, after many videos your explanation is the best. Thank you very much!

[@javieralejandro8144]

Man, you are the best explaining stuff. Your channel was really a great discovery. Keep on the same way

[@tedfrankenstein1317]

I just wanted to thank you for the video. I have recently started to dive back into networking and I wanted to setup a pfSense. This video helped me see the things I was missing when I was attempting to set it up. Great job, dude!

[@henninb]

Very helpful, I appreciate having something easy to follow. thank you.

[@falsemcnuggethope]

This is a much better tutorial than many others. The intro with physical devices makes the viewer understand what they're doing, whereas in other tutorials they would be blindly copying what's happening on the screen share. I still have some questions regarding the proxmox management interface. I've understood that it's best practice to keep the management port separated from the LAN so that proxmox can only be configured by connecting a computer directly to one of the physical network interfaces. Have I totally misunderstood? I got a bit confused since it seems that proxmox is also expected to have an Internet connection. Should I just keep proxmox accessible from LAN and trust that my password is good enough, if I plan to use the virtual router as the only router for my entire home? The management ports for routers are typically accessible for the whole LAN, after all. Thanks for the video and possible comments.

[@JohnnyTHM]

Awesome video! I think a mind map diagram would have been a nice touch after the connection demo in the beginning, just for a clearer picture.

[@GeoffSeeley]

@<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="517">8:37</a> you can also use ethtool to "--identify" the port by blinking LED (no cable needed) however might not work on all NIC chipsets but should on server class network cards.

[@blazer511]

I have subscribed because of your detailed explanations, you know your stuff, thank you

[@Mylowerbackhurts]

You’ll hit 100k soon the hardest part is over just stay consistent! 👍🏽👍🏽👍🏽🔥🔥🔥

[@alewi443]

This is a very informative and well-made video. I'll be subscribing and looking forward to seeing more videos from you!

[@DigitalWinner]

Awsome tutorial! Really covered all the needs!

[@P0ziii]

Thank you, are doing awesome tutorials!

[@DyegoM0101]

Thanks a lot for the video, well explained and detailed.

[@stevet2037]

You are an excellent teacher. Subbed.

[@DevDevGoat]

Great video, super helpful, I def bricked my proxmox install by assigning pfsense the main internet port 😂. Had to edit the interfaces file and qm destroy the pfsense vm. Thanks for making this make more sense!

[@JohnMitchellCalif]

what a wonderful description! Thanks!

[@ToshinoKyoko]

Great explanation thank you

[@stukstu]

nice guide. got there while searching for something on low latency side and what I missed there any information on latency side. I notice big (1-2ms vs 0.2 ms) if default pstate settings are used, and custom ones like pcie_aspm.policy=performance intel_idle.max_cstate=0 processor.max_cstate=1 . of course this is overkill for casual browsing, but if you paranoid (as me) and like to get best latency, then routes in vm is not best case as it add additional layer of latency then I think best would be use proxmox kernel stack for routing

[@paullee107]

Thank you, but question - what function does untangle perform? Do you need untangle on top of pfsense when running in proxmox in this way? Thanks.

[@ElectronicsWizardry]

Untangle is a router/firewall os. It works in a similar way to pfsense. It can work as a router on its own and doesn’t need pfsense or smoother router. I like untangle as it has a better reporting and traffic viewing functions compared to pfsense in my use.

[@paullee107]

@@ElectronicsWizardry thanks a ton; your my new fav creator. Keep going man; we dig it!!

[@zlaad7820]

Genius way to explain it ! Thanks!

[@superheat9850]

Thank you for this! You're the man!

[@denkozlov4220]

after i seen those boxes i started to grasp the idea of what's actually going on in proxmox, although I still don't understand if i can use the same Ethernet port both for managing and for LAN, because I only have 3 ports in the server for WAN, LAN and Access Point.

[@ElectronicsWizardry]

Yea you can use the same port for lan and management. There is basically a network switch inside proxmox that connects the management interface and the lan port on the virtual router to the network jack on the physical system.

[@denkozlov4220]

@@ElectronicsWizardry wow this reply was fast, I am still watching your vid hehe, thanks for the good news!

[@cheekychillipepper]

good pracrical demonstration as some dont get diagrams - will keep watching up for sure

[@arminvogt8690]

Many thanks, great presentation!

[@Starchaser_]

Its because of your content that I have proxmox up and running with multiple VMs. Thank you so much for posting these super informative and up to date videos, keep them coming! also, IMO you should consider listing a paypal donate link or something.

[@SaschiIein]

Really helpful and it's running. I have the following scenario in planning, perhaps you guys can tell me what you think about. I want to separate my lan from my iot device/Homeassistant lan and WLAN. So I set up a proxmox with two lan nics one to my lan and the other to the iot lan. In the iot lan there is a fritzbox which provides dhcp with an other subnet mask than the productive lan and a access point for the iot wlan. my test with pfsense was to set the WAN to the productive lan and the LAN to the iot lan. As far as I tested it works well. The devices in iot lan can communicate between and a linux in this iot lan couldn't access the internet so far so good - what do you think, is this a "good" principle?

[@c051ne]

nice explanation

[@bluecup25]

I was wondering what's the wacomanded amount of debotated WAN to run a proxmox server

[@declanmcardle]

Thanks. Now I'll go off and have a look at entangle. Or is it untangle? Haven't heard of it before.

[@ElectronicsWizardry]

It’s untangle. I like how it it resents data and reports, and the free version has a reasonably full free version.

[@dragilxcom4176]

How can we connect wireless access points to virtual router? also with different vlan and ssids ?

[@nigelholland24]

Thinking of doing this but confused. Where would proxmox get its ip address from as its the Frist thing to boot up before the router. My pfsense box atm os a old pc. And my pppoe connection is direct into the pfsense router.

[@sanchOlabs]

Hi, thanks for the video! One thing I don't fully understand though, in your case then second Linux bridge (vmbr1) is connected to a router/modem? I tried to set it up, but as far as I understood, the first bridge which was created while installing proxmox (vmbr0) was actually connected to the router

[@ElectronicsWizardry]

For the video I had a connected to VMBR0 for the initial setup so I could setup the Proxmox host in the web gui. Once I setup the network on the Proxmox system and setup the router VM I switched the connections so vmbr0 is connected to the network lan and vmbr1 is connected to the router/modem's connection. I think thats the question you were asking. Hope this helps.

[@sanchOlabs]

@@ElectronicsWizardry Yes, that was pretty much it. Thanks for fast response!

[@Nachtfox]

Awesome, dude, thanks?

[@m.m.m.c.a.k.e]

🔥🔥 nice tutorial guy!!

[@jrlund1006]

Nice tutorial man! 👌🏼

[@estusflask982]

Amazing stuff

[@moonlightsoldier8443]

I'm working on a virtual wifi router my isp keeps blocking Linux and phones iv changed the operating system on

[@dw_713]

great content!

[@thestreamreader]

Wouldn't this be a cheaper way to do 10gb switch take an unmanaged switch and make it manageable with proxmox.

[@CharizardSnyper]

Quick question, How would i change the default ip and gateway address i used during the proxmox installation to a virtual instance hosted on the proxmox machine? I've tried changing the default vmbr0 values to point to my opnsense subnet but i do not get a response when i try to access the webgui.

[@ElectronicsWizardry]

You should be able to edit the vmbr0 settings in the Proxmox webui under the server, then network. You can also edit the network settings like a debian system by editing /etc/networking/interfaces.

[@CharizardSnyper]

@@ElectronicsWizardry I've been messing around with it today and editing /etc/hosts and /etc/network/interfaces files using the cli but i dont get a connection on the opnsense subnet. I can revert it back to my isp provided modem subnet using the cli but i cant connect it to the new subnet i created with opnsense. just for context: i have my managed port, my wan and lan connections on dedicated bridges (vmbr0 for proxmox, vmbr2 for wan, vmbr3,4 and 5 for lan). i did not assign the managed port to the opnsense vm, just vmbr2-5.

[@unknownsauce3768]

Very underrated channel! What is the difference between the virtual switch method and passthrough? I have a 2nic mini PC I wish to virtualise pfsense etc.

[@ElectronicsWizardry]

Passthrough will give the whole NIC to the VM, where as with the virtual switch, the hypervisor will pass the network packets from the NIC to the VM. Passthrough will have lower overhead, and give the VM access to all the features of the NIC. When the network card is passed through to the VM, the host won't see the network card, and it won't be available to be used by any other VMs. Id suggest using a virtual switch in this case so the hypervisor and vms can share the LAN port with the router. Setting up passthrough would give both nics to the virtual router, and the host and other vms won't have any NICs to use. Passthrough would make sense if you have a network card dedicated to the router, and want the best performance( faster than 1GBe networks). Using PCIe passthough to give a NIC to a VM also requires compatible hardware, where almost any system will work with a virtual switch.

[@Sergun4uk]

Tnx!

[@alburton4337]

u make excellent videos

[@ElectronicsWizardry]

Glad you like them!

[@ronm6585]

Thank you.

[@Gentlemanspot]

This is great!

[@jimscomments]

I was thinking of creating a PVE VM of OPNsense and connecting it to my cable modem. However I'd like to use HA which means both VMs would need a WAN connection and my ISP only supplies one DHCP IP. Do you know how I can connect both VM's to one ISP IP address? Your video on creating a pfsense VM with two vmbr's was really good.

[@ElectronicsWizardry]

For HA one idea I thought of that might work is to have a network switch from the modem to both of the proxmox nodes in HA, and migrate the router VM as needed. A network switch should be fine between the modem and the router as long as there is only one IP address used(and don't assign a IP on the switch). I don't have a internet connection that lets me test this now, but I think this may work with the residential connections I have seen in the US.

[@jimscomments]

That's an idea I've been thinking about, I think I have a hub somewhere. I get one DHCP IP from my ISP and the ISP monitors the MAC address to maintain a connection. Do you know if PVE when it moves a VM if it keeps the same MAC address? I just found a section in my Cisco switch manual this morning that it has port mirroring. That's designed to mirror the data so one port can be connected to an analyser. If PVE keeps the same MAC address when it moves the VM to a new node that might be an easy solution for me. Thanks for the idea Jim

[@ElectronicsWizardry]

Proxmox should keep the same Mac when the VM is migrated between nodes. A standard switch or yib should work here. I don't think port mirroring is what you want as the mirror is a read only output if I reber correctly and can't have a router plugged into the port.

[@jimscomments]

Thanks for the fast answer. I read someone saying the switch I have has "active/passive port" capability where the second port becomes active when the router is moved. I was thinking mirror was what that guy was discussing. Sounds like it isn't. Looks like I'll be experimenting. Have a nice day

[@jairunet]

Thank you for the demonstration I really appreciate it, let me know if I understand correctly, I can create two virtual bridges, br0, and br1, in br0 I connect the ethernet cable that goes to the switch in my LAN, and on the br1 I connect the ethernet cable coming from the ISP PPPoE connection, I will need to create virtual routers and e.g. map eth0 to br0 and eth1 to br1, in the virtual routers the eth1 interface will be the one allowing me access to the Internet, and the eth0 will be the virtual interface connected to the br0 virtual bridge on the Proxmox that gives me access to my LAN. I hope this is clear enough, and you can confirm or advise if this is not the ideal setup? Thank you very much in advance for your feedback!

[@kiatchong]

How can we access proxmox host, if client is through vm router ?

[@sudan911]

Im having problems connecting physical devices to my PVE help?

[@ElectronicsWizardry]

What do mean by physical devices? Drives? Network cards? Sometimes drivers can be an issue, but really depends on the hardware.

[@the_nurk]

you are my hero

[@nocillis]

I'm thinking of using OPNsense for proxmox but i want to get rid of my router that connects me to the internet but my ISP uses PPPOE. So do i set everything up just like how you did with pfsense but then go into the opnsense wizard after set up and plug in all my PPPOE settings like login and password, apply the changes and then do i just unplug my proxmox pc from the router and plug it directly into my ISP's modem (It's fiberOptic to the box)?

[@ElectronicsWizardry]

I haven't worked with PPPOE, so this is just a guess. I believe you can just plug your modem into the Proxmox host, and then setup the PPPOE settings in the Opensense vm.

[@dukenuk9509]

What's better option in your opinion, passthrough ports/nic or virtual switch?

[@ElectronicsWizardry]

There are advantages and disadvantages to each solution. I enjoy using the virtual networking as its more flexible, easier to change and experiment with. Using PCI passthough is better for security and performance, but is less flexible and has more hardware requirements.

[@mdocod]

I prefer to set up virtual switch/bridges and attach virtualized NIC's to the firewall. This way we can migrate the firewall from node to node in a hyperconverged proxmox cluster.

[@dukenuk9509]

As I thought initially, all depends on usage scenario.

[@galen__]

👍

[@DanielAnn]

It's gonna work with hdmi port ? Like I want to direct screen from virtualized machine to display port

[@ElectronicsWizardry]

The only easy way to have a hdmi or other video out to be connected directly to a van would be with four passthrough. This can be picky with hardware but compatibility is pretty good with newer hardware.

[@drlerkan]

[@jmgacousticmusic]

Thanks so much for the great explanation. I have been getting alot of things setup lately with proxmox. I have opnsense virtualised on my proxmox host. I was wondering how the best way is to backup the opnsense VM. Because it is actually the only router in my system, trying to backup to a NAS on the network being controlled by the opnsense VM seems implausible if the opnsense VM needs to be stopped to do the full backup. Is my only option to use a USB flash drive connected to the proxmox host ?

[@ElectronicsWizardry]

If you setup dvices with static ip addresses it can still access backups when the router is down. But you can also backup the other storage on the proxmox host like USB or a main datastore.

[@jmgacousticmusic]

@@ElectronicsWizardry thanks mate, good idea.

[@jmgacousticmusic]

@@ElectronicsWizardry thanks mate. Not sure how this works if I have made the interface of the proxmox host a Linux bridge and "connected" that to opnsense. The Linux bridge does however have the onboard NIC connected to the bridge, I just didn't bother physically connecting that to the Lan switch to try and keep some isolation. I guess I could put the backup nas on the same network with a physical switch connected to the proxmox host

[@browndogmedia]

Do you do private consulting re: Proxmox, networking, etc.?

[@ElectronicsWizardry]

I do IT consulting, let me know what type of projects your working with and I can see if its a good fit. I have my email on my channel about page, so feel free to contact me.

[@MarkConstable]

Damn, I wish you had of used OpenWrt.

[@pipino_boi]

What is the model of the sff pc that you showed in the beginning? thanks.

[@ElectronicsWizardry]

The mini ITX pc has a product ID of ekiad2500dl, and is made by MITXPC. The board is labeled as pd12t1. It is a pretty slow system by todays standards, with a first gen atom processor.

[@pipino_boi]

@@ElectronicsWizardry thanks man! Yeah atoms are pretty slow, but those two ethernet ports caught my attention since most mini pcs come with only one port.

[@michaelperugini4199]

Any chance you can redo this but do it for untangle 16.6/17.0 ?

[@ElectronicsWizardry]

Sure I can add untange to a future videos with routers. I personally have untangle running as my router and it's setup in a VM us fairly easy.

[@michaelperugini4199]

@@ElectronicsWizardry maybe so but never used proxmox, but have heard about it. i currently have untangle on a system but when it updates and messes up i am spending HOURS recovering backwards version.

[@ElectronicsWizardry]

Hmm that's interesting and I've never had that issue before in bare metal or in a VM.

[@michaelperugini4199]

@@ElectronicsWizardry every since it upgraded automatically to ver 17.0 its been trash.. i cannot make any changes, it locks up.. and i have to pull power and reboot. you cannot get into GUI , or even press power button for a power down. its hosed.

[@steven.cutright]

👍 👌 🔥 📛 💪 💪

[@manokids]

where to download iso

[@T07N]

The biggest issue with most of these guides is that these guys know so much more than the first time newbie and they don’t explain things in simple newbie ways. Anyone who is new to all this cannot understand what this guy is doing. If you do know what he’s saying then you don’t really need to be watching these videos anyways. So basically it’s somewhat useless.

[@ernestoditerribile]

You’ve said unlimited virtual machines. But you are limited by 255x 3 VLANS with 254 devices each. So it’s definitely not unlimited.

[@ernestoditerribile]

So you’re limited to 194.310 virtual machines in a local network

[@blackIce504]

open vswitch is better plus it works on proxmox

[@drlerkan]

Is open switch used only through the console? Can it be used as a visual interface? Is it available as a separate ISO installation?

[@blackIce504]

@@drlerkan open vswitch is included it seems in some versions and yes you can use it via CLI or web interface. ATM i am setting this up using vbox and opensense to test it out as i am looking at replacing Vmware ESXI its not a money thing although they all cost really, its more Vmware's Attitude on hardware at one moment they support something and the next they don't or they semi support something like many 10Gb Fibre cards that now can only work in iscsi or pass through which is just crazy yet they blame the companies that make them when they work perfectly fine in other OS with X firmware and X driver version thus its a Vmware thing anyway, bridge and vswitch are similar and different so you have to do your research on to what suits your needs, i like vswitch as it works like any standard switch where bridged interface has less features that i am after.

[@cocosloan3748]

Tedious AF !

[@thecrlghs]

Shave yer head dude. Aint no shame in losing your hair

[@sanse4409]

Very great Tutorial! Thank you!

[@alfac4746]

Very clear and relevant ! I watched many vids about this. Only a few mentioned that vmbr have to be considered as a switch. That was the missing-link I needed :). The beauty of it is that you can plug virtually and physically to the same switch ! I guess next question would be about VLANs (physical port vs proxmox vs pfSense) ... Keep up the good work !

[@johnathonthomas9446]

This video is a HUGE W