Hey, everyone! I have pfSense set up as a VM on my ESXi host, and it's handling all my network services like the gateway, DNS, and DHCP. Unfortunately, it suddenly stopped working, and now I can't access the pfSense UI. This is causing my entire network, including ESXi and other servers, to go offline. I'm at a complete standstill here and could really use some help with troubleshooting or recovering the setup. I do have console access via iDRAC and the ESXi server, which might be useful. Any advice?
6 Answers
Have you tried just rebooting the pfSense VM? Sometimes that's all it takes to get things back up and running.
Virtualization is great and all, but having a single VMware server as your network's backbone seems risky! You can easily set up redundant hardware to run pfSense, and it can cost less than $1000. It's good to have some physical separation for your firewalls and routers, just in case.
If you're really stuck, restoring from a backup might be your best bet.
To check the system status, go to the console and navigate through the menu options. You'll get a clearer picture of what's wrong.
Might want to check if you're in the right forum for this. It could be helpful to explore r/homelab, especially if there are questions about running a core router as a VM. You can access the console through the ESXi management interface directly, so be sure to give that a shot.
First, try statically IPing a laptop so you can connect to the ESXi web interface. This should allow you to access the pfSense VM console and see what's going on. If a simple reboot doesn't fix the issue, I recommend checking the storage status to ensure everything's intact. Remember, if your ESXi host was using DHCP, consider connecting a monitor and keyboard directly to it to change it to a static IP. I've been in similar situations—frustrating but not impossible to resolve!
I totally get what you're saying! I'll look into that for future setups.