I've used Astaro previously in a VM running on a Windows host but have now finally updated to a full ESXi setup. I have more options available here for the network setup then I did within the Windows host, so I'm wondering what the best way to setup Astaro would be.

I have plenty of physical NIC ports to pass through and dedicate 2 ports to Astaro, one for the WAN, the other for the LAN. I figure this would be best as there would not be a need for the network traffic to transverse through the emulated VMXNET 3 (lots of gamers in the home so ping times are a concern, however small the affect may be). However, the ESXi will also be running a couple of VMs that will need access to the WAN, so keeping the network traffic entirely on a vSwitch for those VMs instead of having to go through 2 physical NICs and a physical switch seems like a more logical choice. However, being that this is also just a cable internet connection (30Mbps/5Mbps), I'm unsure which setup would be the best performing, or if it even matters with these speeds.

Maybe a compromise of 2 NICs pass-through (WAN, LAN) and a vswitch on a 3rd to bridge in Astaro with the LAN nic?

Hi,

1. make sure you use the VMXNET2 or 3 or e1000 NIC driver emulator in VMWare; the 'flexible' VMWare driver is terrible with Linux.

2. If the other VMs could be put in a DMZ, then you could have, in Astaro:
WAN interface (physical NIC)
LAN interface (physical NIC)
DMZ interface (virtual NIC to vSwitch)


This should perform well, and provide good security.

If your VMs need to be on LAN, then yes, you should be able to use some bridging to get what you need, or just put the entire LAN on the vSwitch and don't dedicate a NIC to the Astaro LAN side; it should perform fine.

Barry

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Unfortunately even with the newest UTM 9.003 download the subsequent OVF template that creates the VM has a flaw in that it uses the Flexible adapter. Perhaps this was just my issue but it caused all sorts of havoc for me with an AT&T Uverse installation.

I've been using the Astaro product for a very long time now 8-10 years and until recently was running on Comcast 50mbps/10mbps internet with a bridged SMC business router providing a static IP to my vnic no problems. When I changed to the Uverse gateway model 3801HGV I encountered erratic downloads and response times.

A long long story short spanning many days of testing the resolution was the adapter which was flexible and using the vlance. Remember this was a clean install of UTM 9.003 (2 days ago) and I followed the install perfectly. I ended up changing the Guest operating system from Linux Other 64-bit to Suse Linux Enterprise 10 64bit and used the VMXNET 3 adapter for LAN and WAN.

Works great now same speeds and response that my laptop gets connected to the 3801HGV directly. Hope this helps someone out.

I've always told people that are setting up the UTM on ESXi to just do a clean install, choosing Other 2.6x 64 bit Linux as the machine type, and using VMXNET2/3 NICs -- this avoids the pre-packaged machine's issues. Not sure why they still ship the pre-built appliance this way, maybe it's for backward compatibility with an older version of ESX, who knows. The last poster is absolutely right, never use Flexible NIC with the UTM in a virtual installation.

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I stand corrected, other Guest operating system type "Other 2.6x Linux" does allow VMXNET2 and 3 also E1000. So selecting Suse Linux Enterprise 10 wasn't necessary. In my case the OVF deployment had it set for "Other Linux 64bit" which did not allow me to select other adapters.

Thanks Bruce and an Astaro/Sophos engineer has been made aware of this issue hopefully it will get to the correct people.

I, too, am having very bad latency with ssh sessions locking up (if it really is latency...). I installed via the OVF template which already has the "flexible" driver. The only way I could work out to use the vmxnet module is to edit the .vmx file on the esx box itself. Just replace "flexible" with "vmxnet3". I don't know if this will solve my particular problem, am now doing testing.

I made them aware of this issue over a year and a half ago, when I was troubleshooting a customers machine. It's not high on the list of things to fix, unfortunately

Just delete the NIC after import and add E1000 NIC.