Hey! I know this is maybe better suited for a VMWare group, but I can’t find one with the whole Reddit fiasco. So I’m hoping someone can point me in the right direction or give a bit of advice.

I have VMWare Workstation 16 currently using NAT. This has been working well for a while, as whenever I need to open a port, I just manually do it one by one. But as I’ve been hosting game servers it’s becoming a bit tedious to do one by one and there’s not an option to open ports by ranges using NAT.

I read that Bridged is what is recommended for my use case. And I’ve tried this but can never get it to work. I’ve tried deselecting all but the main NIC too.

I rent a dedicated server, I only have access to one IP with the option to purchase a secondary IP. I’m guessing it’s because of this I can’t get Bridge to work, because I don’t have access to DHCP.

Is my only option to purchase a secondary IP, create a VM for PfSense and have that manage the DHCP? (That’s even if I’m understanding this correctly)

Or would installing something like EXSi achieve what I’m trying to do?

Many thanks in advance!

  • Opuake@lemmy.worldOP
    1·
    1 year ago

    The issue I have isn’t about forwarding ports, it’s more of how I’m able to forward ports. The VMWare Workstation on NAT only allows me to forward a single port at a time which is extremely tedious. I understand that forwarding ports is required to expose services to the internet. So I’m trying to find a way to not use it. Bridged mode would be perfect if I could get it to work.

    The pfsense situation seems perfect for what I need, the only problem I have is that it won’t bridge. (I tried the different options; replicating, and only selecting the nic that provides internet without any luck) I thought it didn’t work because I don’t have access to the hosts dhcp.

    I believed that I needed a second IP for like what rs5th mentioned; One for management of the server, and the second to handle all the VM Network Traffic. When provided with the second IP, I’d set it up as a vNIC as a WAN going to pfsense, and a second vnic for the other vms. Exactly like how you described except from the bridging, seeing as I can’t get that to work.