In this third part of the series, we will install the pfSense virtual firewall appliance and perform the basic configuration.
I recommend using the previous stable release (v. 2.7.2) of pfSense which you can download from the below GitHub repo or shared Google drive locations.
Open VMware Workstation. Go to File menu and select New Virtual Machine.
Select Typical and click Next.
Select Use ISO image and browse and select the pfSense Community Edition ISO file. Click Next to continue.
Enter the desired virtual machine name, for example PFSFW01. Click Next.
Enter the disk size as 30GB, Select Store virtual disk as a single file. Click Next.
Click on Customize Hardware.
Increase the Memory to 512 MB and Processors to 2.
Click on Network Adapter and select Bridged. Also select Replicate physical network connection state. We will be using this as the WAN interface.
Click on Add button to add and configure Network Adapter for the LAN + MGMT + vMotion interface.
Select Network Adapter and click Finish.
Click on Custom and select VMnet1 virtual network from the drop down menu.
Click on Add button to configure additional network interfaces as shown below namely for the different network zones, namely iSCSI storage, Web/DMZ, APP/DB and Client. Click on Close once done.
Click Finish to create the VM and power it on.
Let the virtual machine boot and hit the Enter key to Accept and continue with the installation process.
Hit Enter key to continue to Install pfSense.
Hit Enter to select the default partitioning scheme.
Hit Enter to select the default ZFS configuration and continue with the install process.
Once again hit Enter to proceed further.
Hit the Spacebar key to select the virtual disk and hit Enter to proceed.
Use the arrow keys to move to Yes and hit Enter to start the installation process.
Let the installer continue with the rest of the setup process.
Once the installation is complete hit enter to reboot the virtual machine.
Once the virtual machine reboots you will be presented with the below screen with the menu to configure various settings for the appliance.
The WAN interface will receive IP address via DHCP from your home router. We will manually assign IP addresses to the WAN and LAN interfaces as per our requirement.
On the setup screen type 2 and hit the Enter key to select the option Set interface(s) IP address.
Type 1 and hit the Enter key to configure IP address for the WAN interface.
Type n when asked to configure the WAN interface IP address via DHCP and hit Enter.
Type the IP address 192.168.1.11 and hit Enter to continue. This is the IP range as configured on my home router. It may vary for your environment. Kindly change the IP address according to your home router settings.
Type 24 for the subnet mask and hit Enter.
Type 192.168.1.1 for the gateway and hit Enter. Again this the IP address of my home router. In your case it may vary, kindly change as per your environment.
Type y and hit Enter when asked if the gateway should be set as the default gateway.
Type n and hit Enter when asked to configure the IPv6 address via DHCP.
We are not going to configure any IPv6 address. Just hit the Enter key for none when asked to enter the IPv6 address on the next screen.
We will also not be enabling any DHCP server on the WAN interface. Just type n and hit the Enter key to continue.
We will be using HTTPS to access the web interface for administering the pfSense firewall appliance. Type n and hit the Enter key to continue.
The WAN interface has been configured now. Hit the Enter key to continue.
By default the admin interface is not accessible over the WAN interface for security reasons. One can change this default behaviour. But we will be configuring the LAN interface and using it for administering the firewall appliance. We will follow the same process we used for configuring the WAN interface.
On the next screen type 2 and hit the Enter key.
Type 2 to select the LAN interface and hit the Enter key.
Type n when asked to configure the LAN interface IP address via DHCP and hit Enter.
Type the IP address 10.100.1.11 and hit Enter to continue.
Type 24 for the subnet mask and hit Enter.
Hit Enter for none and continue.
Type n when asked to configure the LAN interface IPV6 address via DHCP and hit Enter.
We are not going to configure any IPv6 address. Just hit the Enter key for none when asked to enter the IPv6 address on the next screen.
We will also not be enabling any DHCP server on the LAN interface. Just type n and hit the Enter key to continue.
We will be using HTTPS to access the web interface for administering the pfSense firewall appliance. Type n and hit the Enter key to continue.
We have configured the LAN interface now. Hit the Enter key to continue.
With this we are done with the initial configuration of the pfSense virtual firewall appliance. Further configuration can be done accessing the web interface at https://10.100.1.11.
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