Upgrading TrueNAS Server to fully VM Truenas and PFSense, or leave it as is?

Computer Hardware & Server Infrastructure Builds
1

Hi there,

first of all I wanted to thank Tom for his Videos on TrueNAS on his channel. With his help I was able to build and configure my own TrueNAS System, which runs great even with a little debian vm on it :wink:

My server consists of the following HW rn:
Xeon E-2176G
32GB ECC
INTEL M10JNP2SB
1 Samsung T5 Bootdrive, external 10Gbit USB
2 Crucial SSDs, 1 Cache and one for Jails and VMs.
6 Exos X16 16 TB HDDs. RAID-Z2

With the 8 drives connected to the SATA Port I have no port left to connect more HDDs in Future. So a HBA will be the way to go in the Future. (one PCIe x8 Port reserved for future use)

Since the building and gathering of information then executing it was so much fun im thinking of going for pfsense next.
IMO the server was way overbuild in HW Specs so thinking of running pfsense on the same box. I may run a bare metal HV such as ESXi or Proxmox and virtualize TrueNAS and PFSense. Or do you guys recommend other HVs?

I guess the Specs are sufficient for that, am I right?

Was thinking of installing a X710-T4L NIC, but i’m not sure if i can “split” the card so that pfsense and truenas could use 2 Ports of the card independently. Need 2.5G on the WAN Port since there will be a 2000/500 Fiber Connection in the near future. Running 1000/200 now. And a 10G Port to the Switch.

TruesNas would also need an independent 10G Port back from the Switch. You think this is possible or am I missing something? Go for an own box for sense and leave the truenas as is?

Please let me know what your’re thinking of the project. THANKS.

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Wow I’ve never even seen 2G on the WAN !!! :dizzy_face:

It might be a challenge to find a dedicated unit to meet your needs, perhaps Netgate has one, though for the cost you could easily build your own. Then you can virtualise it or dedicate it to pfsense.

If you are new to pfsense I’d recommend building it on a dedicated box, once you suss it all out you can virtualise it if you want. It removes one source of errors when trying to troubleshoot.

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Thanks. Yeah I looked at ready to use RouterBoxes with multiple LAN/WAN Ports above 1G. There are only 3 with WIFI6 right now ( Asus X89X, QNAP Qhora 301w and the Zyxel Armor G5) and with none of them i can agree in full. So i was thinking of building my own :wink: