Running so many things on a VM isn’t recommended, so hopefully it’s just a temporary setup for both pfSense and
Blue iris!
No, I actually plan to stay virtualized for pfSense and Blue Iris. I'll either be running two computers simultaneously resulting in a High Availability cluster for pfSense or will have the second desktop just sitting there in case the primary goes down.
With regards to running virtualized, Proxmox claims to have only 1-3% performance loss using OS virtualization as compared to using a standalone server; however, I'm getting better performance running virtualized and with an inferior processor than running Windows 10 standalone!!! I don't understand it but it's left me very impressed with Proxmox and very disappointed with my standalone gaming computer.
To elaborate with details ... I built a high end gaming computer several years ago (i7-4770k CPU, 16GB RAM, and SSD) but with so many other priorities in life I only got to play a few games before retiring it. After recently buying security cameras, I brought it back online with a fresh copy of Win 10 and Blue Iris. Rather than spending money for another router, I decided to flash my existing router back to stock, set it up as an AP, turn another unused router into an AP, install a quad port NIC in the gaming computer, virtualize pfSense and test pfSense versus DD-WRT/OpenWRT.
During my research about pfSense, there was a lot of skepticism of running pfSense virtualized, as a shared resource, and many recommended a $200 dedicated low power appliance (~10W) for pfSense. Besides not being able to justify $200 for a single purpose appliance, I figured if the Blue Iris computer was going to be running 24/7 I could at least try out pfSense as VM without any additional expense and see how stable this setup is.
After thinking more about power consumption, I was really curious just how much power I might be using/wasting so I ordered a Kill A Watt meter to find out.
Gaming Desktop - 21-25% CPU usage with an average of 92W power consumption running ...
- Windows 10 w/Blue Iris
- Virtualbox with pfSense VM
I found refurbished HP desktops with i7 processors on eBay and decided to buy one as a backup for the gaming computer so I'd have minimum downtime with pfSense or Blue Iris should anything fail. Unfortunately I was in a rush as an auction was ending, selected the wrong desktop, and a few days later received a HP 8300 EliteDesk (i7-3770, 16GB RAM, and HDD) for $220. I decided to give it a go anyways and figured I could sell it later if I didn't want it so I installed Proxmox on it, pfSense VM, and Win 10 VM for Blue Iris. After getting it all setup, I decided to benchmark it and the results were very surprising.
HP 8300 EliteDesk - 16-22% CPU usage with an average of 62W of power consumption running...
- Proxmox
- pfSense VM
- Windows 10 VM w/Blue Iris
I then purchased the computer I originally wanted which is a HP 800 G1 (i7-4770, 16GB RAM, HDD) for $215, and received it several days later. I've benchmarked this computer and results are below.
HP 800 G1 EliteDesk - 14-20% CPU usage with an average of 80W of power consumption running ...
- Proxmox
- pfSense VM
- Windows 10 VM w/Blue Iris
I've no idea how this is possible since Blue Iris is running the exact same configs on all machines but it's extremely disappointing to see a like new i7-4770k with SSD be outperformed by a refusbished i7-3770 and i7-4770 with HDD. That said, I can part out the gaming computer and still get $700 for the various pieces so I'll be doing that and either have two 8300's or two 800 G1's running the setup mentioned above for redundancy.
FWIW - I've had the HP 8300 running for over a week now with absolutely no issues whatsoever even while having a Ubuntu Server VM running to begin experimenting with Plex. Once I get all my cameras up and operational I'll only run pfSense and Windows 10 to ensure I don't crash it but I have to say I'm not seeing any issues running virtualized and am very pleased with my results ... feel free to check back months from now to see how my experience has gone.