So here we are in the lab,
and we're going to go through the basic installation of this.
I know everybody can read the documentation,
so we're not going to just do a video right here on all the
minute details of installing pfSense.
We're just going to do it from the basic sense so that we can get it up
and running and get a feel for how the process is.
So here we are at the pfSense website,
and where we want to go to is in the Download section.
And as you can see,
it gives us the latest stable Community Edition version right off the bat,
which is version 2.5 as of this recording. And for the architecture, we can
select either AMD64 or the Netgate ADI architecture as well.
Since this is a virtual machine,
we're going to use just the AMD64. And for the installer,
we're just going to use the ISO installation.
That way we can install it into a VM.
After that downloads, you need to get your virtual machine set up,
which we'll go through right here.
So here we are in our vCenter instance, and I'm in the
GlobopfSense virtual machine that we built.
Let's check out some of the settings real quick.
So for this one,
you're supposed to use the FreeBSD template for VMware
and then adjust the settings as needed.
So I put 2 CPUs,
8 GB of memory, and 50 GB on the hard disk just to get us started.
You can always shut it down and adjust these resources later if you need to.
The Datastore ISO file I uploaded to the datastore, so that's where
we're connecting the CD and DVD drive to for installation procedures.
And then the network adaptors, both 1 and 2, VMXNET 3 is the
recommended for better performance,
but you can also use E1000 if you want to for the adapter types.
And so what these network adaptors‑‑‑network adapter 1 is going to be
my WAN link, and network adapter 2 is my LAN link.
So all of the hosts are going to be connecting to adapter 2,
whereas the WAN link is adapter 1, giving us the internet access
and remote access and stuff like that.
So I'm just going to power this on now, and then we're going to
use the built‑in console while it's loading up to perform the
installation. And as you can see, it takes us straight to the installer.
So we can go through and step through the options and make
sure that we're set up and ready to go.
When I accept that, we're going to hit Install.
We're going to continue with the default keymap since it's the U.
S.
standard. We'll make sure that it's an auto‑guided disk.
If you wanted to, you know, manually do this, you can do that as well.
Or you can open up a shell and partition it by hand.
We're just going to do the automated partitioning.
And so this is going to go through and install the actual operating
system for the firewall onto the virtual machine for us,
and then we'll have to go through and do the initial configuration for it.
All right, now that the installation's finished, it's asking us if we
want to go into the shell and make any final modifications before we go
ahead and start putting it into operation.
So we're going to select No, and we're going to let the virtual machine reboot.
All right,
now that it rebooted, it's going to prompt us to do the initial setup for it.
For this instance,
we're not going to use VLAN, so I'm going to hit No on that one.
And for the WAN interface,
we're going to use vmx0 since that was our first interface that we
built on the virtual machine. For the LAN interface,
we're going to use vmx1. And so our hosts are going to be
connecting to the LAN interface on vmx1, and the WAN interface is
going to provide us our internet services.
So we're going to hit Yes to proceed and let it go
through the initial configuration.
And now that it's done,
let's go ahead and give an IP address to our WAN
interface so that we can be able to use it.
So let's do a WAN interface 1,
and we're going to give it an interface with a static IP.
So we're going to do 33.2 for this one,
and the network mask is going to be a /24.
Gateway is going to be 33.1, and let's skip IPv6.
We will not revert to HTTP because we want to use secure protocols.
And now that our address has been established for that,
we can go through and connect to it.
But before we do, if we take a look at the LAN,
we see that it's 1.1, and we want that to be a network with a 30.0.
So let's go ahead and set the interface for that as well.
This is going to be 30.1 since it's going to be our default gateway for the LAN
network. And we're going to disable the DHCP server on the LAN since we're using
our Windows server as the DHCP server for that.
Now that that's done,
we won't be able to connect to it just yet from outside of it.
But what we can do is go to our domain controller or another
workstation and use that to connect to it,
which we will do right now.
So now that the workstation's booted up,
we can try to connect to the firewall from the LAN link. And,
as you can see,
it's prompting us for the security risk since we didn't have a self‑signed
certificate in this. And then we have our GUI here. And the default credentials
for this are admin and then pfSense for the password.
And as you can see,
it brings us into the pfSense firewall GUI, and it prompts us that
we need to change that admin account right away.
And now all we have to do is hit Next to finish the
setup. And there are nine steps here,
so we're going to step through each one of them.
The hostname is going to be that. We'll change the domain to
Globomantics.org. Our primary DNS servers are going to be our Windows box.
Time servers, we're going to leave there. We'll change the time zone to PST.
WAN interface is going to be a static configuration.
We're going to leave all of this the same.
We don't really need to modify any of this just for
these demonstration purposes.
But if you're setting up this firewall for use in a real environment,
you'd want to customize all these settings.
And as you can see here,
it's prompting us to change that admin password. And
then it's going to prompt us to reload.
And now, as soon as that reloads,
then our pfSense firewall is set up and ready to go for the uses that we
want it for. In the coming clips, we're going to start setting it up for the
various services that we're going to be using it for to help us mitigate
some threats. Join me in the next clips.