My Freenas Setup (4+yrs)

[BlakeNagel07]

Just posting to see what everyone thinks of my setup.

SYSTEM:
Case: Fractal Design Node 304 Black
PSU: EVGA 600W 80+
Mobo: Gigabyte H97N-WIFI
CPU: Intel Core i3-4170 @ 3.7GHz (4 cores)
RAM: 16GB DDR3 @ 1600MHz
Storage: 4 x 2TB WDred in RAID-Z
Boot: 2 x 16GB SanDisk Cruzer USB flash drives mirrored
Jails: Plex, Transmission/OpenVPN, Jackett, Sonarr, Radarr, nginx
Release: FreeNAS 11.2-U5

Over the 4 years I've had one drive get bad sectors that S.M.A.R.T. detected, WD replaced under warranty. Over the past month I started looking into pfSense to secure my network and adding that to my FreeNAS build running in a VM. I know that plenty of people will say that this isn't recommended but after implementing it last week I have had no issues. All system reporting still shows very little usage on CPU/Memory even when hitting it with multiple devices.

When incorporating pfSense I installed a Intel Quad Port NIC that gets passed through.

pfSense system
Runs on VM
Allocated 2 Cores
Allocated 4gb RAM
Quad Port NIC
---Runs the following services
OpenVPN (allows remote connection to home network)
ntopng (tracks network activity)
pfBlockerNG (whole home ad blocker)
Snort (detects network intrusion attempts)

I would like to start to upgrade my system but not sure if its necessary at the moment. (if it ain't broken, don't fix it)

If you were to change anything what would it be and why?

 

[sretalla]

Allocated 4gb RAM

4GB is probably too much for pfSense... try 2GB.

It would be interesting to see the details of how you are passing the NIC through as that's the complicated part which is handled better by a type 1 Hypervisor like ESXi.

 

[BlakeNagel07]

4GB is probably too much for pfSense... try 2GB.

It would be interesting to see the details of how you are passing the NIC through as that's the complicated part which is handled better by a type 1 Hypervisor like ESXi.

Depending on what packages you are running and what you have them setup to do, 2gb will be maxed just from running Snort.

As far as how I passed through the NIC. Freenas detected all 4 ports as individual interfaces so when setting up the VM, I added 4 NIC devices, one for each interface in the VM device setup. Had me scratching my head because I didnt think that it could have been this easy but it worked.

 

[sretalla]

I'm running all the packages you mention and several others and still don't max 2GB.

The way you're set up with the NICs you expose the driver on FreeNAS directly to the Internet. It is probably OK, but security aficionados would say it isn't. You would ideally pass the entire card into the VM (as I do in ESXi).

 

[BlakeNagel07]

I'm running all the packages you mention and several others and still don't max 2GB.

The way you're set up with the NICs you expose the driver on FreeNAS directly to the Internet. It is probably OK, but security aficionados would say it isn't. You would ideally pass the entire card into the VM (as I do in ESXi).

I did see somewhere while doing my research that passing the entire card through is doable. I wanted to make sure i could get pfsence working before going that route.

As far as the 4gb vs 2gb, i miss spoke. pfsense is only allocated 2gb.

 

[sretalla]

pfsense is only allocated 2gb.

And not even using 50% of that...

passing the entire card through is doable

I have seen many threads discussing the wish to pass PCI devices through to VMs, but few report success and I'm not sure that any share a clear method for reaching success.
That's no reason not to try, just wanting to set your expectations for productive use of your time.