why is this appliance not in the directory? it's only mentioned in the forums. and where can i rate it?

What does the appliance do and what unique value does it provide to the intended audience:
Another firewall.

Innovative use of virtualization technology:
none.

Size of the appliance relative to functionality and performance:
Normal size for a firewall

Comments:
The description is very brief and doesn't really give enough detail to properly review it. The use of php & xml sound interesting to a developer but and end user won't care. I will be downloading this appliance to see how it works internally, but as an end user I would see no reason to select this appliance over any of the numerous other firewall appliances.

Note : This review is based only on the appliance description, not on the actual appliance

first, it's better than the other monowall/firewalls because it has vmxnet, mui-control and heartbeat monitoring.

second, i wrote a document that i thought would be made available with the appliance in which i wrote in more depth how it works, and how it's setup.

if it doesn't work out of the box, be sure your host has the NICs connected correctly and the appliance LAN ip address is in range of your workstation at which you are trying to connect. it sometimes helps to connect only the first NIC of the appliance (which would connect to the LAN adapter)

there's a way yes. works for most VMs:

1) import the diskfile into esx using vmkfstools -i
2) attach it to an existing VM
3) start that VM and it will ask you if it has to convert the disk, say yes
4) create a new VM using 3 NICs (vmxnet ofcourse), 1st connected to the LAN, 2nd to the WAN and 3rd to a DMZ (can be internal only), set it to use 64MB ram, no cd or floppy
5) attach the disk to this machine and you're all set

no problemo don't forget to vote http://www.vmware.com/vmtn/appliances/directory/vote/node/150/100?destination=node%2F150 if you like it!

if you click on the link in the first entry on this list, you can click on the stars you'd appoint to this appliance on the very right side of the page, right under 'click to rate item'. the most right star would give the highest rating.

and if this appliance crashes your esx, you'd better file a bugreport. i never heard of a VM that could crash your ESX! i run it in esx 2.5 and 3, vmware server and workstation. all without any problems. behaves perfectly.

it's user admin, pwd mono