Setting Up Proxmox Server with OPNsense VM. Networking Query

[pogo22]

Hello Proxmox Community!

I'm currently in the process of setting up a Proxmox server to host several services like OPNsense, Seafile, Jellyfin, among others. However, as a networking newbie, I'm facing a bit of a networking dilemma and would appreciate some guidance from the community.

Here's the scenario:

Hardware:
My server hardware comes with only two Ethernet NIC's. (I don't have any PCI-e NIC's I could use and don't want to purchase any if possible)

edit: I do have some cheap gigabit USB NIC's from AliExpress I could use for the proxmox connection if that helps, but I would like the other VMs to connect through some internal virtual NIC for better speeds. (I hope that makes sense)

Networking Objective:

I want to isolate the WAN traffic with the OPNsense VM.
The first NIC would connect directly to the modem for WAN access and passed to the OPNsense VM.
The second NIC would connect the OPNsense LAN network to a dumb Ethernet switch, which then connects to the rest of my network (including APs and wired devices).

Concerns:

Is it possible to use a virtual network adapter to give proxmox internet access? Can I still connect to Proxmox for management purposes if one NIC is dedicated to OPNsense for the WAN connection and the other is a connection for LAN of OPNsense VM?
Will I be able to assign IPs to other VMs on Proxmox, considering this networking setup?
I'm unsure about the best approach to achieve this setup while maintaining accessibility to Proxmox and ensuring proper networking for the VMs.

Any advice, tips, or alternative suggestions would be highly appreciated. Thank you in advance for your help!

Best regards.

 

[Hannes Laimer]

Hey,

what you are describing sounds good. You'd have, as you said, one of the NICs passed through to the OPNsense VM, and configure it as WAN there. The other NIC (to your switch) is then on vmbr0, where also your PVE host has an IP. Then in OPNsense you'd configure the interface on vmbr0 to be the LAN and probably setup a DHCP there. All VMs that are connected to vmbr0, and all devices connected to your switch will then get IPs from your OPNsense VM and use it as gateway.