[PVE-User] Interested in running Proxmox on a single (for now) colo node

[Adam Thompson]

On 13-11-06 11:00 AM, Michael Rasmussen wrote:
> On Wed, 06 Nov 2013 11:28:41 -0500
> Rob Fantini <rob at fantinibakery.com> wrote:
>
>> I think many others  use pfsense in a KVM.
>>
>>
>> check forum for threads about cpu type.   I think we had to use a particular type.
>>
> If it is Intel chipset on the motherboard newer than Sandy Bridge you
> should install the i386 version of pfSense and use qemu32 as cpu. Also
> no virtio or sata. Personally I use ide and E1000 nics.

Both the i386 and amd64 versions of pfSense work fine under KVM using 
the kvm64 CPU type.  You can save a little bit of memory by using i386, 
but the difference is not very large... even i386 should now be 
provisioned with 1GB of RAM where possible, and amd64 with 2GB of RAM 
where possible.  That assumes you aren't installing any extra packages.  
Each platforms can run in half that much RAM, but you may occasionally 
encounter minor performance issues.
There is a running debate over whether to use virtio or E1000 for the 
NICs.  Either one should be fine...
Don't use IDE as the disk type if you're going to run any services on 
pfSense (e.g. proxy); SCSI and SATA both work.  Booting from virtio disk 
does not yet work out-of-the-box, there's a trick to making it work (see 
the wiki page below).
Using virtio will lower the host CPU load slightly, usually reduces 
latency, but does not always provide higher performance.

See https://doc.pfsense.org/index.php/VirtIO_Driver_Support for details 
on how to use virtio drivers in pfSense.

-- 
-Adam Thompson
  athompso at athompso.net