General Questions

I am presently using the generic VM image offered on the download page within my ESXi 5.1 environment and I have to admit I am very impressed!

The only thing that concerns me is network slowdowns due to the use of the "Flexible" adapter type.

Is it possible to use VMXNET 3?

Thank You!

It should possible to add the VMXNET drivers to m0n0wall, since it's a BSD OS underneath, here's an old post from someone doing it under VMware GSX server, from 2006, so your mileage may vary:

http://communities.vmware.com/thread/35543

Otherwise, I just run the e1000 Intel driver and it seems to work great.  I haven't done much for throughput tests, since I was just using it to create a small test lab that just needed internet access.

Someone did some testing between the e1000 and VMXNET 3 virtual NICs with pfSense and they found fairly negligible differences between the e1000 and VMXNET 3 NICs in BSD.

http://forum.pfsense.org/index.php/topic,53185.0.html

(Edited to add the pfSense forum link)

Thanks man I appreciate the feedback! I will make a backup copy of the firewall prior to running my tests and see how it goes.