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T20A02 edited this page Oct 13, 2023 · 1 revision

ESXI Configuration

This is a quick install guide written for ESXI 8.0.

  1. First install ESXI using a bootable media, following the standard install prompts, and configure a custom password, which will be used for web access.

  2. Install ESXI on the smaller of the two drives, as we are going to be using the larger as the datastore for VM Disk's, and the smaller for ESXI itself and ISO files.

  3. After ESXI is installed, and started up to the main screen, Press "F2" to access basic systems settings, this will require you to input your password, you set at install. Then select management network settings and configure them as following:

Device IP: 192.168.7.14 Subnet Address: 255.255.255.0 Gateway: 192.168.7.250 DNS Servers: 192.168.4.4, 192.168.4.5 Hostname: System4.cyber.local

  1. After this you should be able to access the ESXI web interface, via the devices IP "192.168.7.14" or system4.cyber.local

  2. Next Select the "Storage" tab on on the dashboard. Now you can rename the first datastore, and also can mount and format other drives as datastores. We configured two datastores:

datastore1-super4

datastore2-super4

Datastore 2 holds the ESXI install, and we have added a directory for holding out ISO files for VM's

  1. Now we are configuring out Internal virtual network switch "350-Internal".

First enter the network tab, from the left side of the screen just below the datastore tab.

Next click the "vswitch" section on the top of the menu

Now create a new switch from the options right below, and create a new switch named 350-Internal

Next go to the tool bar above, and select port-groups, select new port-group, and then associate it with the new internal network

Now out ESXI environment is configured.

PFSense Configuration

First Create a new VM from the VM tab in ESXI with the following specs:

2 network ports, one on VM-Network, on on 350-Internal network

1 CPU

2 GB of RAM

8GB Thin Provision Disk

Mounted PFSense .iso file from datastore. (Don't forget this as I could not get the VM to boot, when mounting this later)

  1. Install PFSense and use the default settings for the install

  2. Once rebooted, access the CLI from the VM Console window and select 2 to configure IP's on the Interface

  3. wxc0 is out WAN network Interface, and should be configured with the following:

No DHCP

IP: 192.168.7.75/24

Upstream Gateway: 192.168.7.250

No IPV6 Address

Do Not revert web interface
  1. For the LAN network select wxc1
IP: 10.0.7.2/24

No Upstream gateway

No IPV6

No DHCP

Do Not Revert Web Interface

MGMT1 Install

In this section we are installing our MGMT box, I used the default xubuntu for the task, as it is reliable, and easy to work with.

  1. Create a second VM with the following specs:
2 CPU Cores

5GB of RAM

30GB Thin provisioned Drive

Network adapter on the 350-Internal network

Xubuntu ISO, mounted in the CD ROM (again don't forget)

  1. Boot up the machine, set username to "Super" hostname to "mgmt1", and Password to whatever you would like.

  2. After install, reboot the machine and right click on the network status icon in the top right, and select "network settings"

Configure the settings as follows:

STATIC:

IP: 10.0.17.100

Subnet: 255.255.255.0

Gateway: 10.0.17.2

DNS Server: 1.1.1.1

Finally Install Chrome remote desktop for easy access, by downloading the Google Chrome .deb file, and installing with sudo dpkg -i "File Name"

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