Proxmox pfSense Setup Tutorial (2024)

[@itpugil]

Great video. Needed a baseline on the standards of what I should set when creating a pfsense kvm in proxmox. We've had 3 clients(2 a few years ago, and 1 just recently) already where we set up pfsense as a guest os within a proxmox enivronment inside a small appliance unit that was designed to run pfsense or opnsense. It was also due to budget constraints, because beside the pfsense kvm is a unifi controller running as an lxc to save them from having to buy a cloud key. And a twingate connector as a 3rd guest(lxc), for the said 3rd client so that we can remote into their network for diagnostics and troubleshooting purposes. Never installed the qemu-agent though.

[@jules.marshall]

Nice video, thank you. Never configured multiqueue before, does 8 make that much of a difference?

[@sheridans]

If using virtio drivers, enabling multiqueue will allow the vm to process network packets on multiple virtual CPUs.

[@luismarrero9293]

hello great video. thank you for sharing all your knowledges with us(newbies) . i am following your instructions but when i tried to install qemu said no SRV record found for the repo pfs ense

[@sheridans]

Sounds like dns issue, try changing dns under general system settings to 8.8.8.8?

[@luismarrero9293]

thanks for the replies I dont have problem from proxmox machine connecting to internet, the issues started when i create a pfsense firewall with a wan and a lan interfaces the pfsense does not connect outside and the VM connected to pfsense neither. I have tried so many ways but still not coonecting to internet. sorry to bother you

[@sheridans]

my last live stream may help, i set up both opnSense and pfSense on Proxmox

[@EZLogikal]

Curious why you create the second bridge when it looks like you only used the first bridge for both network devices? Thanks for sharing this, I learned a lot.

[@sheridans]

The way I have my networks setup for testing, most people won't have a single bridge for LAN and WAN. Glad it helped and thanks for the feedback

[@reallyboringindividual]

Thanks for making the video. Really helped me today. :)

[@sheridans]

Thank you for taking the time to say so!

[@reallyboringindividual]

@@sheridans Saved me a good chunk of cash. No need to buy a router and rent another 1U slot at the datacenter. :)

[@HenryMaxey]

Excellent Tutorial!

[@sheridans]

Thank you!

[@slip0n0fall]

Thanks for the video - you definitely covered more details and nuances than most.

[@sheridans]

Thanks for the feedback 👍

[@phanover3ol]

Great video. Very clear and the qemu steps were missing from a lot of other tutorials I've seen.

[@sheridans]

thank you for taking the time to say so 👍

[@uxer666]

Hello and thanks for your videos... Im new about virtualization and Pfsense maybe my question is a silly one....anyway...now that you install Pfsense in proxmox as virtual machine,you just use this machine as Pfsense firewall/router right? But...if you will install other VM let say linux it will be possible to make Linux VM working under Pfsense VM so Linux will have all the network rules of Pfsense? If is not possible why virtualize Pfsense and dont install directly on the machine? Hope i explain well my questions... Thanks in advance....

[@sheridans]

Hi! Yes, if you install pfSense as a VM, other VMs you create can sit behind pfSense. Without looking back at the video, I thought I had shown that with a FreeBSD VM?

[@Woofydude]

Quick question -- I have proxmox installed on zfs root with a pair of mirrored nvme drives. I created proxmox pfsense vm similar to you with EFI partition. When I went to install pfSense I chose UFS rather than zfs since I didn't want to do "double zfs" to avoid zfs amplication. When I choose this option the installer wanted to partition the mail zvol allocated to pfSense with another efi partition, swap, and system partition. Why does it need another EFI partition? I thought I created this already. Just kind of confused on this one. One more thing, I had to add a random serial device to my pfsense vm to get it to boot properly

[@slip0n0fall]

Curious why not leave the BIOS PVE setting to default?

[@sheridans]

As seen in the video, the vm didn't boot to pfSense, it came up with the uefi shell. I needed to disable Secure Boot in the bios to get it to boot.

[@slip0n0fall]

@@sheridans this was a result of changing BIOS emulation to UEFI from default SeaBIOS in VM setup. Wasn't sure if there was a reason for changing.

[@sheridans]

Just that I wanted uefi boot, if you're happy with bios that's fine, it's personal preference

[@johncnorris]

This was a helpful video. I learned a few things watching you do the installs.

[@sheridans]

Thank you, glad it was useful in some way, and thanks for taking the time to leave feedback; much appreciated.

[@CristovamPeres]

Awesome video! Thanks taking the time to share all this knowledge.

[@sheridans]

Thanks for the feedback, glad people find it useful 👍

[@teesec3978]

i have some issue which has been driving me crazy, i have proxmox on my server and only have two nic ports , i used one for t-he management port on proxmox and the other is what i have left to run pf sesne , this is my set up i create a bridge without an ip address the second nic as a slave port and create a bridge which is connected to nothing and use it as my lan port , my issue now is that when i complete installation nd want to access pf sesne with e wan ip address it doesn't allow me, is there something i am missing and is there a way i can walk through it

[@teesec3978]

pls if you could give me a better option i will appreciate

[@phillychuck]

Trying to follow this but seems like it wants to connect to the internet before it installs? I'm trying to set it up before I connect it 😞

[@sheridans]

Are you using an iso and not the new installer?

[@phillychuck]

@@sheridans I think I grabbed the new one, which is probably this new installer, it said .iso for virtual when I downloaded it tho.,

[@phillychuck]

@@sheridans I got it working, it was more of a live install but I had to wait a month of sunday's for my ISP to give pfSense wan a IP, thanks for the reply!

[@DLLDEPO]

Hello, I installed the qemu guest agent application with your method. I defined 10240 mb - 10gb ram for pfsense in proxmox pve panel. The amount of ram used on the pfsense panel page is 2gb Amount of ram on proxmox pve pfsense summury page: Memory usage 91.87% (9.19 GiB of 10.00 GiB) In the first installation I had the ballon setting on, then I turned off the ballon setting and it shows too much ram, how do I fix it?

[@sheridans]

If you're using zfs file system, zfs will use whatever ram is available for caching. If other processes require ram, zfs will release it as required. That's one of good things of zfs, if you have the memory it will happily use it until something else needs it

[@DLLDEPO]

@@sheridans Thank you, Yes I did the default zfs installation. There is no shutdown, sometimes e2guardian blocks and it has nothing to do with ram. The only problem was Poroxmox showing a red bar on the panel.

[@issamchouchane3820]

Usefull video. thnx

[@sheridans]

Thank you, glad it was useful in some way, and thanks for taking the time to leave feedback; much appreciated.

[@FaberLSH]

Thank u so much!

[@sheridans]

Thanks for taking the time out to say thanks!

[@noormohammedshikalgar]

well i am little confused and this is not the full video Lets say i have an old laptop where i am running proxmox okay now i have plugged in ethernet cable from router to old laptop on default port configured proxmox and running fine able to create vms and all now i have done setup like downloading pfsense vm and creating vm also added extra ethernet over and usb port, and from that extra ethernet port added that connection to one mac pc now if i remove the wan from router and plugged it to my old laptop default port, then everything is lost like not able to access the proxmox over usb to ethernet (extra ethernet), and the wan is also not working at all please any one has idea how to do this or any video please do help scenario what i am trying to do is, route my all internet traffic to my old laptop and then to isp wan, so the old laptop will come first after WAN -> then old laptop (pfsense) -> router Please do help

[@sheridans]

You would pass the nic you're using for the wan straight through to pfsense and bridge the lan interface

[@noormohammedshikalgar]

@@sheridans okay, let me try this tomorrow and well of my connection type is pppoe with username and password and a static wan ip will it work ??

[@sheridans]

Yes, pass the nic directly to pfsense, if you need assistance with pppoe settings I have a video on setting up pfsense with bt fibre

[@andersontoptech]

Absolute life saver! This was just what I was looking for. Thank you.

[@sheridans]

Glad the video helped, thanks for letting us know 🙏 👍

[@avertry9529]

I jumped ahead, when starting failed, I just changed the end to enable, and it worked, then did the start cmd, and I guess it was a fluke, as it worked. LOL service qemu-guest-agent enable service qemu-guest-agent start

[@sheridans]

Glad it worked 💪

[@avertry9529]

@@sheridans FYI, after days of failing to get vlans working from pfsense, and at the point of giving up, I decided to watch anything on proxmox vlans and pfsense, in the hopes of catching what I'm missing, and something you said about proxmox not playing nice with pfsense without qemu-guest-agent. Without you saying that, I would not have installed it. and it was the key to solve the mystery. What I want to know is, why is this not pushed as IMPORANT! Anyway thank you.

[@sheridans]

Thank you for the great feedback!

[@raul230285]

Cool 💪🏾🎉

[@sheridans]

Thanks

[@CriticoolHit]

I did everything you said as you said to do it and it worked. Whodathunkit? Thanks m8

[@sheridans]

Glad it worked 💪, thanks for taking the time to say so!