Tag - PFSense

My latest lab excapades required deploying some VMs into Azure using vRealize Automation. Before I did that though, I wanted to configure private network access between my Azure VNet and my lab network to support things like Domain Joining, Lab DNS lookups, SaltStack Config management, etc. My lab network is managed by a virtual PFSense appliance so this post will cover PFSense configuration too. The IPSec tunnel only needs to exist while I’m deploying and testing things.

Over the years I’ve had many people ask me how I manage networking on my single host lab environment. “How do you do VLANs and manage routing/firewalling without a physical device providing that upstream?” they would ask. Well, I use a PFSense VM. Which would usually be followed up by “Yea but how?” VLAN trunking on my dvSwitch and sub-interfaces within PFSense. Easy stuff! Let’s review requirements first: Be able to define multiple VLANs and subnets.

It’s been a while since my last post! I’ve been spending some time in my homelab with the latest vRealize Suite products. One of those fantastic tools is vRealize Log Insight. I won’t get into the details of the product, but one of the use cases I wanted to tackle for my homelab was ingesting any and all syslog messages I could find. A key piece of my homelab is a PFSense VM that I use for routing and firewall separation between my home network and the components nested snuggly in my HP Z800 Workstation.