Newb needing help setting up simple network

[Noremacyug]

First time user of esxi 5, just set it up last night and it looks to be functioning wonderfully.  This is just for a small home network and will be used for a firewall/file server.  I'm having issues understanding how to setup the network for my desired flow.  My motherboard is a gigabyte ga-c847d ( GIGABYTE - Motherboard - CPU Onboard - GA-C847N-D (rev. 1.0) ).  OS's installed are Smoothwall, and Windows 7.  I'm wanting to have traffic go from my dsl modem ---> smoothwall ---> Windows 7/the second physical nic to feed the rest of my home network.  I simply don't understand how to configure the vlans or access to the physical nics.

Any help is greatly appreciated.  Looking forward to learning more as this looks to be an incredibly useful tool.

Thanks

Guy

[0v3rc10ck3d]

Configure two separate virtual switches with separate physical nics attached to them.

Configure two NICs on the SmoothWall Virtual machine and connect it to each network.

You'll have the SmoothWall Virtual machine attached to both of the following

Outside vSwitch (physical nic goes out to modem)

Inside vSwitch. (physical nic goes to the rest of the physical network)

Attach the Win7 VM to the Inside vSwitch.

I think that's about it. Should work.

[Noremacyug]

Thanks so much for the helpful reply. I had actually just stumbled across the network configuration for the host right before you replied.  After playing around with it for a few minutes I had it figured out. However, your post steered me in the right direction to create two switches. I'm new to running a vm server and find it very useful. I've run vm's on top of OS but never the other way around. I'd tried proxmox in the past but so far am liking esxi much, much better.

Thanks again for the help, however I have one more quick question.

I'm wanting to add a ntfs 3tb hard drive to the system to allow windows serve up my files. Can this be done without having to format my hdd?

[weinstein5]

The issue you are going to face is VMware does not support a virtual disk larger than 2 TB -512 B = there are ways around this such as creating an RDM but that will require shared storage iSCSI or FC SAN -

[0v3rc10ck3d]

ESXi supports pass-through devices.

Though you cant pass through a single harddrive to a virtual machine, you can pass through the entire controller that it's connected to. (you cant if ESXi is installed to a drive or raid on this same controller).

So if you have a second controller, or the drive is USB, you can pass through this second controller or usb controller and attach it to the virtual machine directly. The VM will see the new hardware and attached devices as they are.

Go to your Host -> Configuration -> Advanced Settings (the one under the Hardware section)

Click on Configure Passthrough on the top right.

Select your device and push okay. (I believe a reboot of the ESXi host is required)

After that Right click on your Virtual Machine and go to Setttings

Click the Add button, select the PCI or USB device.

I think it should work. Havent tried it myself.

[Noremacyug]

Thanks again guys. I'll look into the pass through idea, however I want to say I recall a message in the control client that said pass through wasn't supported. I'll double check.