Not sure if a PFSence like native Win/LInux program exists (not from what i can tell on google). I am wanting to use my old pc as my router along side running Plex media server, a Minecraft Server (when my little brother comes over for the weekend), while also serving as my nas (6TB Raid 6).
From what i have read PFSence can be ran in a VM but i have very little experience working with them. Not sure if this can even be done or how it would. Would i give control of the onboard nic to the pfsence VM and give the host machine the wireless card and 2 nic card? This is a big question and i do appreciate any time spent reading or replying. thank you.
There are some potential security implications running a firewall on a vm on the same hardware as other things, but for your purpose this is probably a minimal concern.
That depends on how you want your network. What is the firewall for? Generally you have two interfaces for your firewall in and out so you need two NICs
You want to use the PC as a rotuer/firewall? along with 3 servers? and I assume have all other devices connect to the virtual router? in which case you'll likely want all interfaces assigned to the firewall, connect the other virtual servers to the firewall using virtual interfaces.
sorry for not being clear everything would just run on windows and pfsense would be in the VM. With the network i wanted the connection from my modem to go to the on board nic then be accessible to the local network via a asus pcie wireless card and an intel dual gigabit nic card both installed on the main machine.
so i have had pfSense in a vm before and then had other VMs running behind it. the easiest thing i found was to treat pfSense as any other router. and have a virtual switch on the VM host. all VMs connect to that virtual switch. BUT only pfSense connects to a physical port that has a connection to the internet. now its a standard router, and you can do things like port forwarding to allow outside access to the VMs. if you need to run your wireless, then give pfSense that hardware and configure it.
you would use a hypervisor. doing pfSense in a VM like i did requires a hypervisor. i used Xen. for what you want to do, it seems a little more complicated since you essentially want to run your home network and games on the same machine.
sort of. this will not be used as a desktop but more like a home server. An all in 1 box is what im trying to go for because even with plex trans coding for multiple mobile clients the 8350 is overkill.