Virtualize SD-WAN on xcp-ng?

[junglechuck]

Hi everyone,

I'm trying to virtualize SD-WAN on a Protectli FW4B with ESXi, but it seems to have issues with the NICs. Anyone have any luck running SD-WAN on XCP-NG? I'm new to virtual platforms, so I haven't been able to figure out how to install the SD-WAN on XCP-NG. Any input would be greatly appreciated! Thanks.

Edit:
After lots of fiddling (that the best I can claim of my VMWare skills), maybe SD-WAN is limited to only one WAN and one LAN right now? My goal is to have WAN, WAN2, LAN and two or three more VLANs connected of course to the LAN. When I enable this I get this:


All the "greek" named interfaces are invalid- they won't get DHCP. If anyone has any ideas, I'd really appreciate it. Thanks.

[Clectech]

Hi. I'm no expert but have recently started building a homelab using vbox. I was told that vbox is the only platform approved for "free" use. Not sure if that applies here, but thought I'd throw that out there.

I'm able to get traffic through both my WAN's, but only after assigning the NIC's actual MAC to WAN 1 and LAN 1 in the vbox network settings. However, WAN 1 only seems to pass IPV6 traffic. Strangely enough, I don't have to assign the MAC on WAN 2.

I look forward to following this thread. Good stuff!

[junglechuck]

@Clectech,
I'm not as familiar with vbox, but ESXi and xcp-ng both have free versions. Untangle recommends vbox or exsi, but only esxi version 6.5 or earlier work for Untangle's SD-WAN was far as I can tell. In both exsi and xcp-ng I can get as far as installing the S-WAN VM, but it only shows two NICs (no matter how many vSwitches or Port Groups I add. I suspect it has to do with the lack of Virtual Tools, but I'm stuck on that also. I can attach the Guest Tools to the xcp-ng SD-WAN VM, but I can't get the tools to install. I use Protectli devices for all my installs, so maybe that complicates things too. If anyone has experience in installing what would be considered "other" Guest VM's like Untangle's SD-WAN, I'd appreciate your input.

[Clectech]

@junglechuck I was referring to Untangle SD-WAN Router only being free for home use only when using the WRT version on vbox. Using the WRT version of SD-WAN, I'm able to have multiple interfaces.

If I have time, I'll see if running the esxi version on an esxi machine yields the same results as you.

[Clectech]

Any luck with this? After much fiddling of my own, I realized that the other interfaces have to be assigned an IP for each port. They will then serve DHCP to downstream devices. If you don't want each interface to have it's own subnet, then change from "addresses" to "bridged" and bridge to internal, whick will then serve dhcp to downstream devices.

[junglechuck]

Clectech,
Sorry, the pandemic has me working harder than ever. I haven't had any home lab time yet. Where I was stuck however was getting xcp guest tools to install in the Untangle SD-WAN VM. I'm a beginner with xcp-ng, so I'm trying to figure it out. I'll get to work on it! Thanks for keeping up the thread.

[junglechuck]

Any luck with this? After much fiddling of my own, I realized that the other interfaces have to be assigned an IP for each port. They will then serve DHCP to downstream devices. If you don't want each interface to have it's own subnet, then change from "addresses" to "bridged" and bridge to internal, whick will then serve dhcp to downstream devices.

Hey Clectech,
Sorry to report that I'm giving up on this for now. I don't have any real experience in VM setup, and I didn't get a response on the XCP-NG forum either. If you have success with this, I would be interested to know about. Cheers.