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Network Firewall under VMWare ESXi


Ryan Doughty

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Morning all, after some browsing round the net I thought I would try and find out what others are using/recommending:

I am looking for a VMware appliance or software to move my network firewalling to my VMware ESXi server. I would also like to have a look and play with IDS so if it includes that level of functionality, great. So far I have tried m0n0wall, untangle and smoothwall. I like smoothwall but the IDS seems to be broken in the latest version as snort have made some changes and smoothwall has yet to catch up. I am not a linux guy and unfortunately don't have much time to start hacking it to make it work.

So if you use firewall software on your ESXi server what do you use and why, if not any recommendations?

Thanks

Ryan

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I still have problems with firewalls being in virtual machines. It just gives me that "ehhhh" feeling in my stomach. In my opinion(which we all know the saying about opinions) it's better to have the firewall as a separate machine on the network. It doesn't really need that much in hardware specs. Mini-itx, or an old laptop would work pretty good for a basic low power firewall.

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I still have problems with firewalls being in virtual machines. It just gives me that "ehhhh" feeling in my stomach. In my opinion(which we all know the saying about opinions) it's better to have the firewall as a separate machine on the network. It doesn't really need that much in hardware specs. Mini-itx, or an old laptop would work pretty good for a basic low power firewall.

If you configure your network properly this works pretty well. All the other pieces need to be in place for this to stay secure. For example, VLANs segregating inside and outside the firewall, lots of trunking. No service consoles in the DMZ or outside, or in the production VLAN for that matter! Strong passwords, etc.

Layers!

It's understandable for people to feel more comfortable with a firewall you can see and feel. Trust me, that feeling is what pays my bills, so I'm not going to shoot holes in it. If all your machines are virtual and you are comfortable in the vswitch configs, you should be fine. With that said, I don't use any, but I don't have any VMs that I face forward. At work, we use a PIX, but we have many machines that are not virtual, so it's needed. Another downfall is another single point of failure. You said you were using ESX3i, so there's no HA or vMotion there, so there's no failover. If any part of the box goes down, it's all down. :(

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  • 3 weeks later...

if it is for home use i would definitly recomend astaro security gateway out of all linux firewalls i have had smoothwall, ip cop, untangle, etc. my favorite as far as configuration and managment astaaro is the way forward

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