It possible to use ipfire with 1 nic on a virtual machine

Hardware
1

My Ipfire pc died on me. I have a WIndows 2008 Server (Domain Controller). Can I add a NIC (USB dongle) and on a separate hard drive create a virtual machine HYPER V, install ipfire on the virtual hard drive and use the usb dongle and attach that to a managed switch that connects to my cable modem (that cannects to my isp
And then route traffic from other machines through ipfire on the virtual machine
Hope this all makes sense

2

Are you planning to use it as a firewall or just to experiment?

It is possible to install ipf as a hyper-v vm but I think it will be very buggy.

Especially if you use a USB ethernet dongle, the throughput will be limited.

But let us know, how everything worked.

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3

Sorry, but that’s a terrible idea. Windows Server 2008 is EOL and will no longer receive any updates. Before you worry about Ipfire, you should upgrade your Windows as soon as possible.

And apart from that, it’s generally not a good idea to use a virtual machine within the operating system for productive use. Use ESXI, Proxmox etc. directly and install the virtual machines on them. Running everything via 1 physical NIC is possible, but limits the entire machine.

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4

Hi,

I very much agree to the previous post. Further, the point of running IPFire with at least two NICs is so that it is physically not possible to bypass the firewall, ensuring that network traffic to the internet (or whatever untrusted network is connected to the RED interface) is always seen/processed/filtered by IPFire. :slight_smile:

For additional thoughts on this topic, please see www.ipfire.org - Information security recommendations for IPFire users, especially the “Supply network access on a need-to-work basis” section, as well as www.ipfire.org - Firewall configuration recommendations for IPFire users.

Thanks, and best regards,
Peter MĂĽller

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