After making excuses for myself about my limitations due to funding for projects I decided to suck it up and try running pfSense in a VM. Now I had to get over the hurdles of enabling SVM in the UEFI then, enable IO APIC in virtual box to get it running. The installation required a few tries as I am so unfamiliar with installation process but I was able to get it fully installed. Then I had to figure out how as I going to connect to the web portal that’s where my problems began.
Since this supposed to be a Router/Firewall the minimum number of NICs (Network Interface Cards) is 2. One NIC for WAN and one NIC for LAN I had to statically assign the WAN interface with a IP address inside my PCs network. This allowed me to log in via the web portal and begin configuration.
So I went through basic set up wizard changed my password etc and made it to the home screen. That’s when I realized if I wanna truly get my hands dirty playing with the this I am gonna need another NIC. But at least I can go through the interface get familiar with it until then.
I plan to mock up some configurations for a small business network layout with a few VLANs and just get used to the interface. Let’s see where this goes.
Jemuel|Griffith 