General Questions

I am preparing a server for deployment into a colocation facility and have been assigned a /28 block of IP addresses.

I was given x.x.x.144/28 as the "network address", .145 as the gateway, .159 as the broadcast and .146-.158 as the IP range.

I have two network interfaces on the machine, one will allow me access to the linux host and the other will give access to multiple vmware virtual machines. I wish to keep the vmware machines on m0n0wall's OPT1 interface and disallow most if not all traffic from OPT1 to the LAN interface to keep the virtual machines from accessing the host.

I am debating on how best to set this up, and have never had to use m0n0wall with multiple WAN IP addresses.

I don't quite understand what this "network address" is and whether it's usable as m0n0wall's WAN address. If not, what would I want to set the WAN IP and subnet mask to?

Will I need to set up proxy ARP in order to have m0n0wall utilize the rest of the IP addresses?

Would it be possible to disable NAT on the OPT1 interface and give the virtual machines external IP addresses while maintaining NAT on the LAN interface? If so, what would I want the OPT1 interface IP set to? In this scenario could I configure m0n0wall to allow any traffic between LAN and OPT1 in case I have a need to do so later?

I appreciate any comments or guidance in advance.

The network address is...  well it's the network address. Read up on TCP/IP. It's the same as, say, 192.168.1.0/24 in a /24 network, or x.x.x.0 in any /24 network. i.e. it's not a usable IP, it's the identifier of the subnet.

The rest depends on how many servers you'll have, whether you want to NAT or assign public IP's directly, etc.